Simon Gray

The brave little lives that Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and thats why they arouse emotions that are anything but small.New York Times on Quartermaines Terms

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 Grays play Japes was first performed at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, in November 2000 before transferring to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in February 2001.

Sharp, funny and clever . . . What a pleasure to re-encounter a play that combines unabashed intelligence and zinging wit with a rare generosity of spirit.Daily Telegraph on The Common PursuitGrays stature as one of the handful of great tragi-comic English dramatists of the second half of the twentieth century would appear now to be undisputed. Howard Jacobson, Critical QuarterlyHidden LaughterA sad divine comedy, superbly written. Gray nurses his characters and cares for them, but he never pampers them, or pities them, or presumes to use them as his spokesman. In this respect, he has become an English Chekhov... At the same time, Gray dispenses some of the incandescent malice and moral savagery of Coward at his acid best... But, of course, comparisons can only help you get your bearings. Gray is entirely his own man in this painful, querulous, warm, hard and mature play.Sunday Times

Spies betray people. Thats what we do. It becomes a - a habit. Difficult to break - even when its not - not strictly necessary. Wormwood Scrubs Prison, London, 1961. One of Britains 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 Grays 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.

A masterly portrayal of an innocent. Harold Pinter, from Directing Simon Grays Plays, Simon Gray Plays 1Superficially, 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 Quartermaines Terms - it spans several years - creates a poignant sense of transience and mortality.Daily TelegraphGrays 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 dont 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

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 Grays 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 superbly written play, a funny play, an agonising play. It is, moreover, a play of truth and insight. A play to savour.Punch on Otherwise EngagedLife in the theatre hasnt brought me anything more rewarding than directing Simon Grays plays. Harold PinterPlaintiffs and DefendantsExceptionally good... the play gave such a rending picture of married mess that it was hard to know where to look. Clive James, ObserverSimon Gray is the one [TV playwright] whose work I most relish seeing for his acerbic wit, wonderful ironies and above all for his care with our mother tongue. Dennis Potter

ButleyWhat is so wondrous about a play so basically defeatist and hurtful is its ability to be funny. The stark, unsentimental approach to the homosexual relationship, the cynical send-up of academic life, the skeptical view of the teacher-pupil associations are all stunningly illuminated by continuous explosions of sardonic, needling, feline, vituperative and civilised lines.Evening Standard

Una obra de culto del humor británico. Los diarios de un escritor lúcido, irónico y algo gruñón capaz de enlazar, en una sola frase, reflexiones sublimes y gags disparatados.¿Cómo asume un dramaturgo de exito los aspectos mas banales de toda existencia, los viajes en coche y las mascotas, los multicines y las peliculas de Steven Seagal, las visitas al urologo y las cuentas al descubierto? En el caso de Simon Gray, con socarroneria, sinceridad a raudales y el desparpajo de aquel al que le importa un pimiento el que diran.Gray no tiene un pelo de tonto y carece de rencor. Logra retratarnos tal como somos, pero sin renunciar a la simpatia. Asi, es capaz de diseccionar un poema de W. H. Auden o un episodio de Ley y orden con la misma sagacidad con la que juzga a la vecina de playa que le ha robado la hamaca, o de explicar con la mayor elocuencia por que las hemorroides auparon a Gary Cooper y arruinaron a Napoleon. El libro es tambien una confesion en toda regla: con las pequeñas contradicciones de la vida adulta, confluye el relato a veces amargo, otras orgulloso de una infancia y adolescencia marcadas por los abusos de sus profesores, las infidelidades paternas y sus propios coqueteos con la delincuencia.Si bien Borges sostenia que a todos nos toca vivir malos tiempos, pocos escritores han sabido despotricar con la maestria de Gray contra los tiempos actuales, excepcionalmente necios, desabridos y estupidos, y ganarse asi un lugar de honor entre los maestros del humor britanico. La critica ha dicho...El mejor libro que he leido en todo el año. Julian BarnesEl gran tesoro oculto del humor ingles. Nunca creo a las personas que dicen reirse a carcajadas con un libro, pero ahi estaba yo con Diarios de un fumador, riendome a carcajadas una y otra vez. Craig BrownQue divertido y humano es este libro de un autor ingles nada conocido entre nosotros, pero que fue un dramaturgo y diarista realmente estupendo y genial. Toni Montesinos, La RazonDiarios de un fumador es un libro divertidisimo, se mete sin miedo -y a veces parece que sin conciencia ni rumbo- en asuntos hondos y situaciones comprometidas; la risa ilumina los rincones y es un modo de acercarse tambien a sucesos desagradables de los que no resulta facil hablar. Gray no tiene reparos en poner el cuerpo y la actitud en favor de la carcajada. Aloma Rodriguez, La LecturaEs un texto repleto de ingenio, agudezas y sarcasmos. El humor que destila es lo que hace que su lectura sea recomendable. Mauricio Bach, The Objective

¿Cómo asume un dramaturgo de éxito los aspectos más banales de toda existencia, los viajes en coche y las mascotas, los multicines y las películas de Steven Seagal, las visitas al urólogo y las cuentas al descubierto? En el caso de Simon Gray, con socarroneria, sinceridad a raudales y el desparpajo de aquel al que le importa un pimiento el que diran.Gray no tiene un pelo de tonto y carece de rencor. Logra retratarnos tal como somos, pero sin renunciar a la simpatia. Asi, es capaz de diseccionar un poema de W. H. Auden o un episodio de Ley y orden con la misma sagacidad con la que juzga a la vecina de playa que le ha robado la hamaca, o de explicar con la mayor elocuencia por que las hemorroides auparon a Gary Cooper y arruinaron a Napoleon. El libro es tambien una confesion en toda regla: con las pequeñas contradicciones de la vida adulta, confluye el relato ?a veces amargo, otras orgulloso? de una infancia y adolescencia marcadas por los abusos de sus profesores, las infidelidades paternas y sus propios coqueteos con la delincuencia.Si bien Borges sostenia que a todos nos toca vivir malos tiempos, pocos escritores han sabido despotricar con la maestria de Gray contra los tiempos actuales, excepcionalmente necios, desabridos y estupidos, y ganarse asi un lugar de honor entre los maestros del humor britanico.La critica ha dicho...El mejor libro que he leido en todo el año. Julian BarnesEl gran tesoro oculto del humor ingles. Nunca creo a las personas que dicen reirse a carcajadas con un libro, pero ahi estaba yo con Diarios de un fumador, riendome a carcajadas una y otra vez. Craig Brown