In Praise of … Simon Gray: seriously funny artist of angst

Alexander Larman

IN HIS “BLEAKLY COMIC” 1975 play Otherwise Engaged, the dramatist Simon Gray sets up a moment which must be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on stage. The drama revolves around the publisher Simon Hench, who wishes to spend an evening by himself listening to Parsifal, but is constantly interrupted by family, friends and nemeses, including his brother, the schoolmaster Stephen, who bears a grudge against Hench’s acquaintance, a louche, hard-drinking writer named Jeff Golding. The hack informed him on a previous meeting that “people — he meant me, of course — only went into teaching because they were latent pederasts”. Asked to retract his statement, it is said of Golding “he offered to take back the latent, and congratulated me on my luck”. And when the writer…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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