Böcker av Simon Gray

Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is the most successful of corporations ever, not that anyone can say specifically what it is they do. The founder and president of Yellow Orang-Utan Industries hides from the public, using a computer generated fake president to do most of the talking he'd ordinarily be doing himself. The fake president, Piano Smedley, is universally liked and attributed to the corporation's success. But when news breaks that a body answering Piano Smedley's description has been found, problems arise.The real president's personal assistant, Gertrude, finds herself grieving the fake president, even when she knows better. The task of programming the replacement fake president is based on data from departments who can't make up their mind and the real president becomes even less engaged with business than before. The executive board of directors make an appearance to take control, but by the time the new fake president appears, interest in Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is plummeting.Gertrude's made some new friends amongst the corporation though. One of them is Wellington, who interprets the stock market remarkably well and quite loyally thinks he can help the corporation. If any of them could get through to the real president. Except also, Wellington's remarkable skills and this earnest belief may be because Wellington's a prototype android, and nobody was supposed to find that out.

This celebrated English drama by the author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged is based on a famous murder case involving a lonely divorced woman who has married a man thirty years her senior. However, his age and increasing deafness make her lonelier than before, and in desperation she takes up with a young man who has been hired as a gardener. He falls for her and, in a moment of passion, kills her husband with a pair of garden shears.|2 women, 4 men

Here is a hilarious look at the artistic pretensions of the young and the rich that charts a decade in the life of a London family transplanted to an idyllic country setting. A literary agent and his wife buy a Devon cottage where she can write, children will be happy, and they can relax. Into their world walks the local vicar a classically comic character who tends their magnificent garden and their emotional if not spiritual needs as the outside world intrudes with failure and disillusionment.|3 women, 5 men

A very English modern play, reeking of real tragedy, real humour and real life. The Common Pursuit chronicles the erosion of the ambitions of a smug, elitist group of Cambridge frien''s. Stuart is editor of a literary magazine and the pursuit of excellence is shown to be economically a bad proposition in this world. The magazine collapses and the characters'' fates vary as the play proceeds. An ironic epilogue returns to the early days in Cambridge with the young people planning their futures.|1 woman, 5 men

Stage Struck, an inventive thriller that employs a handful of actors to play chameleon like parts within parts, opens in the living room of one Robert Simon. Formerly a first rate stage manager in a provincial repertory company, he now he keeps house for his West End actress wife while amusing himself with various sexual adventures. He is a thoroughly happy man until the clumsy intervention of a psychiatrist destroys his happiness and his marriage. He plans a hideous revenge on his wife and the psychiatrist a reveng, which allows him to rediscover all his old talents.|1 woman, 3 men

Never has the celebrated author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged been more amusing and more touching than in this thoroughly delightful portrait of a mediocre but lovable English schoolteacher named St. John Quartermaine and his fellow faculty at a small school in Cambridge which teaches English to foreigners.2 women, 5 men

Isolated university professor Simon Hench, completely and selfishly otherwise engaged in listening to a new recording "Parsifal" is continually interrupted by students, friends, lovers and life.2 women, 5 men

'Sharp, funny and clever . . . What a pleasure to re-encounter a play that combines unabashed intelligence and zinging wit with a rare generosity of spirit.'Daily Telegraph on The Common Pursuit'Gray's stature as one of the handful of great tragi-comic English dramatists of the second half of the twentieth century would appear now to be undisputed.' Howard Jacobson, Critical QuarterlyHidden Laughter'A sad divine comedy, superbly written. Gray nurses his characters and cares for them, but he never pampers them, or pities them, or presumes to use them as his spokesman. In this respect, he has become an English Chekhov... At the same time, Gray dispenses some of the incandescent malice and moral savagery of Coward at his acid best... But, of course, comparisons can only help you get your bearings. Gray is entirely his own man in this painful, querulous, warm, hard and mature play.' Sunday Times

'The brave little lives that Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and that's why they arouse emotions that are anything but small.'New York Times on Quartermaine's Terms

'A superbly written play, a funny play, an agonising play. It is, moreover, a play of truth and insight. A play to savour.' Punch on Otherwise Engaged'Life in the theatre hasn't brought me anything more rewarding than directing Simon Gray's plays.' Harold PinterPlaintiffs and DefendantsExceptionally good... the play gave such a rending picture of married mess that it was hard to know where to look.' Clive James, Observer'Simon Gray is the one [TV playwright] whose work I most relish seeing for his acerbic wit, wonderful ironies and above all for his care with our mother tongue.' Dennis Potter

Butley 'What is so wondrous about a play so basically defeatist and hurtful is its ability to be funny. The stark, unsentimental approach to the homosexual relationship, the cynical send-up of academic life, the skeptical view of the teacher-pupil associations are all stunningly illuminated by continuous explosions of sardonic, needling, feline, vituperative and civilised lines.' Evening Standard

Offers an account of what the author refers to as 'the beginning of my dying'.

'You should go out and buy The Smoking Diaries right now ... because you are unlikely to come across a funnier, cleverer, more painful book' Daily Telegraph

How much can go wrong in a day? How much can go wrong in a life? In this chronicle of a year of things going wrong, and just occasionally right, the author meets with triumph and disaster and treats those two impostors just the same - which is to say with the mixture of wit, anger, vexation and candour.

In 'The Pig Trade', under the shadow of Mussolini, a famous art historian and a notorious art dealer have an explosive final encounter. 'Japes Too' and 'Michael' recount the love of two brothers for one woman, and 'The Holy Terror' continues the story of a publisher's nervous breakdown.