Abstract

Theatre

This article presents information on several plays. Some of the plays are "The Common Pursuit," The Artificial Jungle," and "You Never Can Tell." "The Common Pursuit," by Simon Gray, is a brittle, funny and very nasty play that traces the lives of six Cambridge undergraduates from youth to early middle age. The play opens in the early 1960s, in the rooms of Stuart Thorne, a clever undergraduate who, together with five friends, is starting a literary magazine called "The Common Pursuit," named in honor of the book by their hero, F.R. Leavis. "The Artificial Jungle," by Charles Ludlam, is a hilarious play inspired in large part by James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice." George Bernard Straw's comedy "You Never Can Tell," at the Circle in the Square. Shaw's problems as a dramatist often arose when he tried to make a point by excessive circumlocution.