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'The brave little lives that Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and that's why they arouse emotions that are anything but small.' New York Times on Quartermaine's Terms
Simon Gray is the ideal teenager — smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon crashes his car into The Liberty Tree, another portrait starts to emerge. Soon an investigation has begun into computer hacking at Simon’s high school, for it seems tests are being printed out before they are given. Could Simon be involved? Simon, meanwhile, is in a coma — but is this another appearance that may be deceiving? For inside his own head, Simon can walk around and talk to some people. He even seems to be having a curious conversation with a man who was hung for murder 200 years ago, in the branches of the same tree Simon crashed into. What can a 200-year-old murder have to do with Simon’s accident? And how do we know who is really innocent and who is really guilty?
Here is a hilarious look at the artistic pretentions of the young and the rich that charts a decade in the life of a London family transplanted to an idyllic country setting. A literary agent and his wife buy a Devon cottage where she can write, children will be happy, and they can relax. Into their world walks the local vicar, a classically comic character who tends their magnificant garden and their emotional if not spiritual needs as the outside world intrudes with failure and disillusionment.
THE STORY: begins at Cambridge University, where a group of talented undergraduates decide to start a high-minded literary magazine to be called The Common Pursuit , in honor of their mentor F.R. Leavis, a famed professor of English. Stuart,
'A masterly portrayal of an innocent.' Harold Pinter, from 'Directing Simon Gray's Plays', Simon Gray Plays 1 'Superficially, it is a light comedy about a group of educated, often eccentric English characters in an academic backwater in the early sixties. But though the jokes are excellent, the piece cuts deep. There are Strindberg-like glimpses of wretchedly unhappy marriages and, as in Ibsen, a sense of chickens coming home to roost. But the primary impression here is of an English Chekhov. As in the plays of the Russian master, the characters talk a lot, but they rarely listen, still less understand, so they are often at cross-purposes. And like The Seagull, the long time scheme in Quartermaine's Terms - it spans several years - creates a poignant sense of transience and mortality.' Daily Telegraph 'Gray's selection of details and exchanges is immaculate: he achieves drama and mystery in mundane lives; the comedy is beautifully stated and even personal tragedies are underlined with running gags that ring with truthfulness. No false hothouse effect is necessary to make bare the bewilderment of spirit of his central figure, the grinning, forgetful and deeply kind staff lecturer, St John Quartermaine, an inarticulate character of awesome loneliness who rivals the tragic force of Willy Loman.' The Times 'A play that is at once full of doom and gloom and bristling with wry, even uproarious comedy. The mixture is so artfully balanced that we really don't know where the laughter ends and the tears begin: the playwright is in full possession of the Chekhovian territory where the tragedies and absurdities of life become one and the same.' New York Times
The work of English playwright Simon Gray (1936-2008) has always resisted ideological and stylistic labels. His artistic independence has also had an unwelcome side effect: It cost him the critical attention garnered by his peers. This book, the first monograph on Gray, examines his oeuvre from the early plays, which hack away at the formalism and humanism of traditional English satire, to the later ones, in which he explores English professionals and their problems connecting with each other. If Gray remains the least known major English dramatist of his day, he's also one of the boldest and best.
When he turned sixty-five, playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary in which he reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Bringing together the four parts of The Smoking Diaries (The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette, and Coda) this beautiful volume is filled with comedy and serious reflection, sharp observation and painful self-disclosure. A brilliant and moving account of life's unsteady progress, it takes the reader to the heart of one man's brilliant struggle towards some kind of personal truth.
Set in the early 1950s on the South coast, this satirical play follows the fortunes of 12 year-old, Holly. His snobbish mother is bored out of her mind and his father is having an affair. But Holly also has to contend with his piano tutor, whose interest in the boy is more than merely musical.
The famous account of Stephen Fry's departure from Cell Mates, only days after opening