THE STORY: A group of talented undergraduates at Cambridge University decides 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 for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play and the Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Play.
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.” —New York Magazine.
“It is one of those evenings where you laugh a lot and then are greatly moved.” —New York 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.” —New York Post.
