''Quartermaine's Terms'' is a play by
Simon Gray which won
The Cheltenham Prize in 1982.
Plot
The play takes place over a period of two years in the 1960s in the staffroom at a
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
school for
teaching English to foreigners. It deals with the interrelationship between seven teachers at the school, in particular that between St John Quartermaine and the others.
The dominant theme is loneliness, and during the course of the play all of the characters experience the trauma of being or feeling alone. Mark’s wife leaves him; Derek, from Hull, finds Cambridge initially unwelcoming; Eddie is ultimately bereaved by the loss of a partner; Anita’s husband is a philanderer; Henry is trapped in a dysfunctional nuclear family and Melanie is similarly trapped caring for a mother whom she despises. Quartermaine is a painfully lonely bachelor, seemingly with no friends other than his colleagues at the school.
Although the play is at times highly comic, it has a very serious theme; and the struggles of each character with their own types of loneliness are moving and sad. Above all, Quartermaine himself is an increasingly pathetic figure lost in his own confused thoughts – and ultimately deserted. His future as the play closes is poignantly bleak.
Original production
It was first staged on 30 July 1981 at the
Queen’s Theatre, London.
*Director:
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramat ...
*Producer:
Michael Codron
*Designer:
Eileen Diss
*Lighting: Leonard Tucker
;Critical reception
''
The Stage
''The Stage'' is a British weekly newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry and particularly theatre. Founded in 1880, ''The Stage'' contains news, reviews, opinion, features, and recruitment advertising, mainly directed at thos ...
'' wrote, "Simon Gray has written the best play of his notable career, a delicate, moving and yet consistently funny piece, eloquently directed by Harold Pinter, which depicts the English penchant for quiet suffering with immense skill."
Off-Broadway
The play was staged on 24 February 1983 at Playhouse 91 Theater, New York in a production by
Long Wharf Theatre.
*Producers: John A. McQuiggan & Ethel Watt
*Director: Kenneth Frankel
*Settings: David Jenkins
*Costumes: Bill Walker
*Lighting:
Pat Collins
;Critical reception
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called it "a play that is at once full of doom and gloom and bristling with wry, even uproarious comedy. The mixture is so artfully balanced that we really don't know where the laughter ends and the tears begin: the playwright is in full possession of that
Chekhovian territory where the tragedies and absurdities of life become one and the same."
TV adaptation
A
film
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
was broadcast on
BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...
in 1987, as part of the
Screen Two series.
*Producer:
Louis Marks
*Director:
Bill Hays
Radio adaptations
*The play was presented on
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...
on 26 May 1991.
*Director: Gordon House
*The play was presented on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...
on Saturday 17 June 2006.
*Producer: Catherine Bailey
*Director:
Maria Aitken
West End revival
The play opened at
Wyndham's Theatre on 23 January 2013, after brief runs at
Theatre Royal, Brighton, and the
Theatre Royal, Bath.
*Director:
Richard Eyre
*Producer:
Michael Codron
;Critical reception
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' noted "a rueful social comedy that stands up well to revival and gives star billing to Rowan Atkinson, who reminds us in his first straight play in 25 years that he is a highly capable actor"; while ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'' wrote "there’s a delight in watching a playwright so in control of his craft that he holds you riveted in a world where only the silence seems to scream."
References
External links
*
* {{IMDb title, 0093806, , ("Screen Two" television episode 1987)
1971 plays
English plays
West End plays
Off-Broadway plays
Plays adapted into television shows