The Definitive Simon Gray 1 - Softcover

Gray, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571162231 ISBN 13: 9780571162239

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 1992

Synopsis

First staged at the Criterion Theatre in 1971, this is a play about a university lecturer, Ben Butley, who shares his office and his flat with a former star pupil, Joey, now also a teacher. On the day the play takes place Butley faces both the ultimate breakdown of his marriage and of his intense friendship with Joey. Butley's painful discoveries are made against a background of petty university politics and unease about student dissent. He greets them with a blistering torrent of repartee and rhetoric. Other plays by this author include "Otherwise Engaged" and "The Common Pursuit".

About this title

About the Author

Simon Gray was born in 1936. He began his writing career with Colmain (1963), the first of five novels, all published by Faber. He is the author of many plays for TV and radio, also films, including the 1987 adaptation of J L Carr s A Month in the Country, and TV films including Running Late, After Pilkington (winner of the Prix Italia) and Emmy Award-winning Unnatural Pursuits. He wrote more than thirty stage plays amongst them Butley and Otherwise Engaged (which both received Evening Standard Awards for Best Play), Close of Play, The Rear Column, Quartermaine s Terms, The Common Pursuit, Hidden Laughter, The Late Middle Classes (winner of the Barclay s Best Play Award), Japes, The Old Masters (his ninth play to be directed by Harold Pinter) and Little Nell, which premiered at the Theatre Royal Bath in 2007, directed by Peter Hall. Little Nell was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006, and Missing Dates in 2008. In 1991 he was made BAFTA Writer of the Year. His acclaimed works of non-fiction are: An Unnatural Pursuit, How s That for Telling Em, Fat Lady?, Fat Chance, Enter a Fox, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette and Coda. He was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year s Honours for his services to Drama and Literature. Simon Gray died in August 2008.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571162231
• ISBN 13: 9780571162239
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416