The Common Pursuit is a play by Simon Gray which follows the lives of six characters who first meet as undergraduates at Cambridge University when they are involved in setting up a literary magazine called The Common Pursuit. The title is an allusion to F. R. Leavis's 1952 collection of essays Scrutiny: The Common Pursuit.
Characters
Stuart Thorne
Marigold Watson
Martin Musgrove
Humphry Taylor
Nick Finchling
Peter Whetworth
Synopsis
The characters of The Common Pursuit first meet in Stuart Thorne's rooms in Cambridge, at the first meeting of a literary magazine Stuart is starting called The Common Pursuit. He and Marigold are very much in love, Nick is determined to become a theatre critic, Humphry wants to be a philosophy professor, Martin is set on a career in publishing and Peter only seems interested in chasing women. The play then follows their various lives and careers over the next 20 years, and their struggles to remain faithful to their ambitions and the things they love.
Between the 1984 and 1988 London productions, Gray directed the American premiere of The Common Pursuit at the Promenade Theatre, Off-Broadway. It opened on October 19, 1986, won positive notices, ran for 352 performances, and won both the 1987 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and the 1987 Outer Critics Circle for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play.[4] The original cast included:
This is a play that delivers an unexpected depth charge of emotion. Simon Gray's writing is sharp, funny and clever, and, more than 20 years after the piece's premiere, the dramatist's assumption of intelligence and cultural knowledge on the part of his audience seems breathtakingly daring.[7]
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