THE COMMON PURSUIT. To 20 July.
London.
THE COMMON PURSUIT
by Simon Gray.
Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre 53 Southwark Street SE1 1RU To 20 July 2008.
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7907 7060.
www.menierchocolatefactory.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 May.
Artful slices of life in a literary magazine.
Simon Gray’s plays are dripping with wit. Some nearly drown in it. Irony settles round events, the unexpected takes expectations by surprise. Here, in a detail, we’ve grown accustomed to one character’s coughing-seizures. When we hear offstage coughing we know who’s coming. But it isn’t them. Aware of his blatant trick, Gray masks it by blaming the coughing on dust rather than smoking.
His 1984 play also uses wit to slap the audience with realisation. Expectations are switched, reversed or undermined, as they are for the five Cambridge University men starting out in 1968 to create a literary magazine with the same title as the play.
It’s taken from a book of critical essays by high-priest of Cambridge literary seriousness F R Leavis. But, as their lives unfold across 18-years, diverging from their common purpose, individual psyches taking characters their own ways, the source-book might more likely be Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise.
TV celebrity lures one. And there’s Connolly’s pram in the hallway. For sex is the commonest pursuit here, involving both Marigold (the least present character, but both sacrificial and assertive) and unseen women and men. Sex is the instrument of self-destruction by the most capable, self-critical character, who’s right about himself and others: except, ironically, once.
Gray takes several sideswipes, including one at an Arts Council pursuing the lowest common denominator, before a final, brief backward glimpse of the group assembled in the youthful assurance of 1968 (recalling Priestley’s Time and the Conways). These are very different people whose supposed common pursuit will be shattered as they face life. And, chronologically, the final image is of one man alone in an office he’s about to leave permanently, early hopes having finally faded.
Fiona Laird’s production gradually takes hold, though some performances are a bit strained. However, Robert Portal’s Stuart is laconic and determined, standing-out for literary values and independence. James Dreyfus captures both Humphry’s external image and the low self-esteem that fuels his tough exterior, while Mary Stockley ensures Marigold’s independence as a character, developing from 1968’s heedless hedonism to the mature concern of adulthood and child-bearing.
Stuart: Robert Portal.
Marigold: Mary Stockley.
Martin: Ben Caplan.
Humphry: James Dreyfus.
Nick: Reece Shearsmith.
Peter: Nigel Harman.
Director: Fiona Laird.
Designer/Costume: Anthony Lamble.
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp.
Sound: Sebastian Frost for Orbital.
Fight director: Terry King.
Associate director: Ryan McBryde.
Associate designer: Jeremy Daker.
2008-05-30 11:59:58