Kirjahaku

'Like a Henry James novella; circuitous, ambiguous, enthralling and chilling.'Financial Times on The Late Middle Classes

The anthology of the 2006 zine series, 'Simon Gray: 2006', a horribly flawed vanity project mostly concerned with haggy name-dropping. Includes illustrations & glossary.

Spies betray people. That's what we do. It becomes a - a habit. Difficult to break - even when it's not - not strictly necessary.Wormwood Scrubs Prison, London, 1961. One of Britain's most notorious double agents, George Blake, is serving a forty-two year sentence when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Irish petty criminal, Sean Bourke. Both men are eccentric outsiders. Each sees in each other the possibility of escape and not just from prison. But once on the outside their mutual dependence faces mounting pressures from MI5, the KGB and indeed from themselves.Simon Gray's absorbing and deftly funny play explores how personal freedom is an illusion and how even friendship must have careful boundaries in a world where deception is a reflex response.Cell Mates premiered at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, in January 1995 before transferring to the Albery Theatre, London. The play was revived at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in November 2017.

Isolated university professor Simon Hench, completely and selfishly otherwise engaged in listening to a new recording "Parsifal" is continually interrupted by students, friends, lovers and life.2 women, 5 men

A very English modern play, reeking of real tragedy, real humour and real life. The Common Pursuit chronicles the erosion of the ambitions of a smug, elitist group of Cambridge frien's. Stuart is editor of a literary magazine and the pursuit of excellence is shown to be economically a bad proposition in this world. The magazine collapses and the characters' fates vary as the play proceeds. An ironic epilogue returns to the early days in Cambridge with the young people planning their futures.1 woman, 5 men

Here is a hilarious look at the artistic pretensions 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 magnificent garden and their emotional if not spiritual needs as the outside world intrudes with failure and disillusionment.-3 women, 5 men

Never has the celebrated author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged been more amusing and more touching than in this thoroughly delightful portrait of a mediocre but lovable English schoolteacher named St. John Quartermaine and his fellow faculty at a small school in Cambridge which teaches English to foreigners.2 women, 5 men

Stage Struck, an inventive thriller that employs a handful of actors to play chameleon like parts within parts, opens in the living room of one Robert Simon. Formerly a first rate stage manager in a provincial repertory company, he now he keeps house for his West End actress wife while amusing himself with various sexual adventures. He is a thoroughly happy man until the clumsy intervention of a psychiatrist destroys his happiness and his marriage. He plans a hideous revenge on his wife and the psychiatrist a reveng, which allows him to rediscover all his old talents.1 woman, 3 men

Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is the most successful of corporations ever, not that anyone can say specifically what it is they do. The founder and president of Yellow Orang-Utan Industries hides from the public, using a computer generated fake president to do most of the talking he'd ordinarily be doing himself. The fake president, Piano Smedley, is universally liked and attributed to the corporation's success. But when news breaks that a body answering Piano Smedley's description has been found, problems arise.The real president's personal assistant, Gertrude, finds herself grieving the fake president, even when she knows better. The task of programming the replacement fake president is based on data from departments who can't make up their mind and the real president becomes even less engaged with business than before. The executive board of directors make an appearance to take control, but by the time the new fake president appears, interest in Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is plummeting.Gertrude's made some new friends amongst the corporation though. One of them is Wellington, who interprets the stock market remarkably well and quite loyally thinks he can help the corporation. If any of them could get through to the real president. Except also, Wellington's remarkable skills and this earnest belief may be because Wellington's a prototype android, and nobody was supposed to find that out.

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The Smoking Diaries was the result, in which one of Britain's most beloved and original writers reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining.

A funny yet melancholic look at the frustrations, secrets and guilt of middle-class respectability in 1950s England. England in the 1950s. Celia, bored to distraction, fills her time with tennis and gin; Charles, a pathologist, is buried in his work among the living and the dead; and their gifted son, Holly, is having his first lessons in both music and in life. Simon Gray's play The Late Middle Classes was first performed at the Palace Theatre, Watford, in March 1999, and produced on tour by the Ambassadors Theatre Group/Turnstile Group Limited. It was the winner of the Barclays Stage Award for Best New Play of 1999. The play was revived at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in June 2010.

* A new black comedy by Simon Gray * Simon Gray has left Faber to come to Nick Hern Books * Simon Gray's work includes Butley, Otherwise Engaged, and Quartermaine's Terms.

A stylish mix of the comic and the macabre, exploring ideas about love, both platonic and romantic. Take one closet writer of romantic fiction, her beloved local vicar, her philandering publisher husband, a girl on the loose, a fast car, a devotion to literature and a captivating length of chain... Enid is a best-selling romantic novelist. Her publisher husband has confessed to an affair with his PA. Enid lures the girl to her country retreat and quite literally puts her in chains. What follows is quite unexpected as the two women develop an increasing affection for each other. Simon Gray's play Just the Three of Us was first performed by the Peter Hall Company at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, in October 1997, starring Prunella Scales.

Two brothers share the house they grew up in, and then share the woman they both love. They have a daughter, but who is the father? Spanning thirty years and offering a new slant on the eternal triangle, Simon Gray’s funny, sardonic new play Japes is driven by involuntary cruelties, damaging accidents of fate of the terrible ravages of time.

A funny and sardonic play about two brothers trapped in a love triangle with the woman they both love. Two brothers share the house they grew up in and then share the woman they both love. But as time passes and their family grows, the ties that bind them are tested to the limit. Spanning thirty years and offering a new slant on the eternal triangle, the plot is driven by involuntary cruelties, damaging accidents of fate and the terrible ravages of time. Simon Gray's play Japes was first performed at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, in November 2000 before transferring to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in February 2001.