About the Play:

Quartermaine's Terms was named by the Royal National Theatre of Britain as one of the best 100 plays of the 20th century.

Quartermaine's Terms is a full-length dramatic comedy by Simon Gray. Never has the celebrated author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged been more amusing and more touching than in this thoroughly delightful portrait of a mediocre but lovable English schoolteacher named St. John Quartermaine and his fellow faculty who gravitate between classes the staff room of their small school in Cambridge which teaches English to foreigners.

Quartermaine's Terms takes place over a period of two years in the 1960s in the staff room at a Cambridge school where English is taught to foreigners eager to learn. It deals with the interrelationship between seven teachers at the school. At the heart of the group is St. John (pronounced 'Sinjon') Quartermaine, a kind-hearted, pleasant and agreeable person, but utterly hopeless as a teacher himself. An almost permanent feature in the staff room, he's always available to listen to the problems of his self-obsessed colleagues. But when a new Principal is appointed, Quartermaine's future looks precarious. This probing classic is an artful portrait of doom and gloom blended with bristling wit and dry, even uproarious comedy.

Quartermaine's Terms premiered in 1981 at the Queen's Theatre in the commercial heart of British theatre, the West End of London, and went on to win The Cheltenham Prize in a production directed by Harold Pinter. British stage and screen favorite Rowan Atkinson starred in the 2013 West End revival of this play that has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 5 male

What people say:

"A masterly portrayal of an innocent." — Harold Pinter

"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 Checkhovian territory where the tragedies and absurdities become one and the same.... The brave little lives that Mr. Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and that's why they arouse emotions that are anything but small." — The New York Times

"A lovely play has brushed with the unexpected laughter and autumnal sorrow of life." — Newsday

"Compassionate and funny." — Variety

"Superficially, it is a light comedy about a group of educated, often eccentric English characters in an academic backwater in the early sixties. But though the jokes are excellent, the piece cuts deep. There are Strindberg-like glimpses of wretchedly unhappy marriages and, as in Ibsen, a sense of chickens coming home to roost. But the primary impression here is of an English Chekhov. As in the plays of the Russian master, the characters talk a lot, but they rarely listen, still less understand, so they are often at cross-purposes. And like The Seagull, the long time scheme in Quartermaine's Terms – it spans several years – creates a poignant sense of transience and mortality." — Daily Telegraph

"Gray's selection of details and exchanges is immaculate: he achieves drama and mystery in mundane lives; the comedy is beautifully stated and even personal tragedies are underlined with running gags that ring with truthfulness. No false hothouse effect is necessary to make bare the bewilderment of spirit of his central figure, the grinning, forgetful and deeply kind staff lecturer, St John Quartermaine, an inarticulate character of awesome loneliness who rivals the tragic force of Willy Loman." — The Times

About the Playwright:

Simon Gray (1936-2008) was a prolific British playwright, novelist, and screenwriter of dark comedies, who alternately lived in Canada and England, attending Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the University of Cambridge. While working as a university lecturer in both countries, he authored of over thirty plays, most notably Butley and Otherwise Engaged, both of which earned him Tony nominations. He also wrote many plays for television and radio, several novels, and eight memoirs. Simon Gray was appointed CBE in 2005 for services to drama and literature.