Simon Gray Plays 3

'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

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.

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?

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,

The new play from the popular author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged.

THE STORY: It is characteristic of Simon Gray to place a witty, intellectual hero center stage, and then systematically and ruthlessly reveal the barrenness of his soul and spirit. In CLOSE OF PLAY (the title is a cricket term) the central figure i

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.

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.

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.