The Late Middle Classes

by Simon Gray

A new black comedy by Simon Gray.

Genres: Plays

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Simon James Holliday Gray, CBE (21 October 1936 – 7 August 2008) was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to 5 published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film, and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries

Reviews

[William Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Different territory than Gray’s more famous pieces (BUTLEY, QUARTERMAINE’S TERMS)—think, instead, of Terence Rattigan—but Gray’s typically nuanced tone with submerged tensions, secrets, and motivations surfacing suddenly but not unexpectedly. Mostly a flashback to 50s England, a diagnosis of British middle class bias, pained introspection, childhood and adult secrets both. Meditation on music, submerged and suppression desires. Act One builds slowly, with nothing hugely significant in the wings—then things turn and much is revealed—with some typical, pleasing ambiguity in the end.