Martin Sherman was born in Philadelphia, educated at Boston University and now lives in London. His early plays include Passing By, Cracks and Rio Grande, all originally presented by Playwrights Horizons in New York. Bent premiered at the Royal Court in 1979, transferred to the Criterion Theatre and was then presented on Broadway, where it received a Tony nomination for Best Play and won the Dramatist Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. Bent has been produced in over forty-five countries, and has been turned into a ballet in Brazil, and, in 1989, was revived at the National Theatre. It has been voted one of the NT2000 One Hundred Plays of the Century. His next plays were Messiah (Hampstead and Aldwych Theatres, 1983), When She Danced (King's Head, 1988; Gielgud, 1991), A Madhouse in Goa (Lyric Hammersmith and Apollo, 1989), Some Sunny Day (Hampstead, 1996) and Rose (National Theatre, 1999). Rose received an Olivier nomination for Best Play and transferred to Broadway the following season. Sherman has written an adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India for Shared Experience (Riverside Studios, 2002; Lyric Hammersmith, 2004) and a new version of a Luigi Pirandello play, Absolutely! (Perhaps) (Wyndhams, 2003) He has also written the book for the musical The Boy From Oz which opened on Broadway in 2003. His screenplays include The Clothes in the Wardrobe (US title: The Summer House), Alive and Kicking, Bent, Callas Forever and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Martin Sherman Plays: One was published by Methuen Drama in 2004.

Onassis portrays the last years of the life of the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who, after a notorious affair with Maria Callas, married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968.
Passing By, first performed in New York in 1975, is both a brave and a charming romantic comedy about a love between two men whose hearts pull them together as their lives pull them apart. "One of the most radical plays ever written. Quirky, funny, touching, romantic and revolutionary. It overturned my life. Perhaps it will do the same for others." Simon Callow
The Miser is Moliere's satirical masterpiece about obsession and status endures. Fast, funny and full of energy, this sparkling new version by Martin Sherman is as pertinent today as it was when first written and performed by Moliere in the seventeenth century. Sherman's adaptation received its world premiere at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, on 11 April 2013.