London Gives Simon Gray’s ‘Pursuit’ a Second Chance

A flop London play that became a surprise New York hit is having its second shot at local success as a result of its long off-Broadway run.

“Whatever happens to it now, it’s a much better piece,” playwright Simon Gray said of his play “The Common Pursuit,” which opens a commercial London engagement April 7 at the Phoenix Theater.

The play, which looks at the lapsed ideals of six graduates of Cambridge University over a 15-year period, bowed to mixed reviews and disappointing houses four years ago at West London’s not-for-profit Lyric, Hammersmith Theater.

Hopes of transferring that production to the West End, London’s Broadway, were never realized. It took the play’s subsequent success off-Broadway, where it began an acclaimed 10-month run at the Promenade Theater in October, 1986, to secure its present West End engagement.

Co-producer John McQuiggan said the play has been transformed from its original London run. “I don’t think anyone wants to dwell on 1984,” he said. “My feeling is this is a brand new production.”

McQuiggan produced the play on his own in New York and is co-producing it in London with Howard Panter’s Independent Theatrical Productions.

Playwright Harold Pinter directed the initial London production, which local critics found too narrowly focused a look at the well-educated elite of Britain’s publishing and academic communities.

New York critics, however, responded warmly to the literacy of the play and its rueful, compelling plot. In addition, Gray said they didn’t bother to speculate on the real-life prototypes for his on-stage characters.

“People realized there wasn’t anything to know except what was on the stage,” Gray, a Cambridge graduate, said of the New York audience. “It’s part of the general imbecility of theater critics in England that they thought the real-life parallels were worth discussing.”

Gray said three separate American productions of the play--in Los Angeles, New Haven, Conn., and New York--enabled him to do the necessary rewrites.

“I had always felt dissatisfied with the text,” said the playwright. “Now, it’s the same skeleton but with, I hope, more flesh.”

Gray’s previous New York and London hits include “Butley,” “Otherwise Engaged” and “Quartermaine’s Terms.”

Has Gray now closed the book on “The Common Pursuit” at last?

“Oh God, yes,” he said. “I think I’ve done all I can humanly do to make the play work, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”