The Common Pursuit
Opening Night: May 24, 2012
Closing: July 29, 2012
Theater: Laura Pels Theatre
Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit chronicles twenty years in the lives of six friends, from their ambitious collegiate days to their surprising discoveries in the real world. Idealistic Cambridge student Stuart Thorne enlists some of his classmates to help him launch a new literary magazine. With the pursuit of great literature as their common thread, they become lifelong friends. But when damaging secrets crop up and business demands creep in, Stuart is faced with some unexpected decisions. Delightfully witty and remarkably poignant, The Common Pursuit is a captivating journey from who we think we are…to who we turn out to be. Directed by Moises Kaufman.
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May 24, 2012
The oenophile takes a sip of wine and pronounces judgment: “This is simultaneously bland and acid. Is it English?” Since the taster is a man of rigorous values, a Cambridge don who lets nobody and nothing off the hook, he might well apply similar words to the play in which he appears: “The Common Pursuit,” Simon Gray’s 1984 portrait of tarnishing ideals among a group of young literati, which opened on Thursday night in an unconvincing revival at the Laura Pels Theater.
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May 31, 2012
An English play from 1984, Simon Gray’s “The Common Pursuit” is a tidy little comedy about smart people who mess up their lives. Roundabout’s revival, which opened Thursday at the Steinberg Center for Theater, could be considered a slim, although pleasant, companion piece to “Look Back in Anger,” which just played there. Both British works regard young, dissatisfied people who look to their future.
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May 24, 2012
If you’ve ever struggled to stay true-blue to your dreams and ambitions you may recognize yourself in “The Common Pursuit” — but in this case you’ll have a posh British accent. The 1984 drama by English writer Simon Gray follows five men and a woman who meet as students at Cambridge in the late ’60s to launch a literary magazine called The Common Pursuit.
READ THE REVIEWMay 24, 2012
Beneath the stairwell sign assuring guests that all cigarettes smoked on stage are herbal, the following sign might as well have been posted regarding The Roundabout’s new production of Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit: “Please rest assured that even the most profound dialogue in this play contains nothing that might cause anxiety, moral discomfort, sadness, painful self-reflection, spiritual restlessness, or any other sort of emotional turbulence.”
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May 28, 2012
There’s nothing funnier than collegiate humor in the hands of a clever satirist like Simon Gray. So credit helmer Moises Kaufman and ensemble for their stylish delivery of the comic bits in the Brit scribe’s 1984 play "The Common Pursuit," about a group of university friends with high-minded ambitions who thoughtlessly allow their ideals to become compromised after they graduate into the real world. But Gray’s sardonic humor has a darker side that is glossed over in this Roundabout production, and aside from the joy of getting laughs, there seems to be no rationale at all for this revival.
READ THE REVIEWMay 25, 2012
Late in The Common Pursuit, the Simon Gray play that Roundabout is now reviving at its Off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, two characters tussle over the writing to which they’ve devoted their lives. Is sacrificing years, countless dollars, and potentially rewarding family opportunities to a nearly unread literary journal the definition of contemporary nobility? Or is, say, shunting a piece intended for said publication to one that will get wider notice (in this case, Vogue) a reasonable compromise between personal and professional aesthetics? If you find this question compelling, you’ll easily take to Moisés Kaufman’s sturdy, studied production, as that’s what it most deeply investigates.
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