THE STORY: begins at Cambridge University, where a group of talented undergraduates decide to start a high-minded literary magazine to be called
The Common Pursuit, in honor of their mentor F.R. Leavis, a famed professor of English. Stuart, the initiator of the project, is to become editor, aided by his inamorata (and future wife) Marigold, while the others will contribute their literary or management skills. The action of the play then moves ahead, in a series of deftly constructed scenes, to follow the fates of the characters over the next twenty years, as the magazine falters and, one by one, they compromise their integrity to the pursuit of success and fall victim to the disillusionment which comes when youthful ideas prove hollow. Their stories encompass sexual torment, adultery, treachery, deceit, success, failure and death, but all told with such dazzling wit and compassionate understanding that, in the end, the play leaves us not only enlightened and entertained but also moved and saddened by the hard choices that life in our time can force upon even the most promising among us.
Winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award as Best Off-Broadway Production. A brilliant London and New York success by one of our theatre's most celebrated and respected writers. Following the fortunes of a group of gifted Cambridge University undergraduates from youthful self-assurance to middle-aged disenchantment, the play abounds in lively wit and eloquent repartee and a poignant, if bittersweet, awareness of the ironic twists and turns which life can take when ideals come into conflict with unyielding reality. "
dialogue that sparkles, percolates, punctures, and aphoristically sums up entire lives, offstage or on
We leave in a state of melancholy grace, chastened and enlightened." - NY Magazine. "It is one of those evenings where you laugh a lot and then are greatly moved." - NY Daily News. "His characters are shrewdly drawn and never allowed to become types
a real play of wit and irony and sadness
" - The New Yorker. "
an absorbing and richly enjoyable experience
Do not miss it." - NY Post.
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Dramatists Play Service Inc. |
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| Category |
Plays |
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| Medium |
Softcover |
| ISBN13 |
9780822202349 |
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| Dimensions |
197x134 |
