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David Marks (left) gestures with colleague Alexander Strain in “Bach at Leipzig” at Rep Stage. Photo by Stan Barouh.

Capitol Hill has been home to many actors whose faces were familiar to theatergoers all around the region, but whose un-made-up, un-costumed presence was part and parcel of life in this small town within a big city. We lost one of them last month when David Marks died at the agonizingly young age of 49.

Until then, Marks could be seen co-coaching his son’s little league team, the Red Sox, or planting squash in the Virginia Avenue Community Garden, or chatting in the Eastern Market with a constant stream of neighbors who recognized him. He was an actor, husband of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Garland Scott, and father of their son Harris, who is a rising fourth-grader at Watkins Elementary.

I suppose that every theatergoer in the Washington region has a favorite memory of Marks’ many appearances on local stages. For me, the memory that will leap to mind whenever his name comes up is his carefully controlled, but still outlandish appearance, as the organist Johan Graupner in the Rep Stage production of the farcical “Bach at Leipzig” two years ago.

Marks had five nominations for Helen Hayes awards for outstanding acting. Indeed, one year he was nominated in both the lead actor and in the supporting actor categories. He won the award for his work in the world premiere of “Briar Patch” at Arena Stage, where he had been a member of the acting company.

Much of his work at Arena came before I began covering theater in this town. But, I did get to see him shine there in Sam Shepard’s “True West” as a Hollywood producer wearing the most extravagant outfit for a day on the golf course.

The classics – or at least old plays – held many roles he could sink his teeth into with relish. At the Olney Theatre Center, he tackled the title role in Moliére’s “The Miser,” demonstrating an uncanny ability to let the audience see the workings of the mind of his character. He captured the essence of parsimony in a scene where he instructed his threadbare servants not to offer drinks at a wedding reception and to only refill the guest’s glasses on the second request.

He could make an impression even in roles that often go unnoticed. Who remembers the son who hires the chauffer for his mother in Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisey?” People who saw Marks do the show, that’s who.

Shakespeare’s comic characters presented other opportunities. Among his best known roles were Nick Bottom, who is transformed into an ass in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night.” For me, however, it was the classic clown of a pimp in “Measure for Measure” that best marks Marks’ ability to create a complete character in a minimum of stage time.

He found opportunities in newer plays as well. In Craig Wright’s “Melissa Arctic,” a modern fantastic take on Shakespeare’s “The Winter Tale,” he made the free spirit of a shepherd, who raises an abandoned daughter, a touching as well as diverting character. Even in small roles he could make a major impression. At the Round House, he brought tone and depth for a morning moment to Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” as the milkman on his rounds. At Studio he handled the part of a newsmonger in Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmore” so deftly that the peculiarity of the character retained its freshness without wearing thin over the course of the evening.