TV REVIEWS : Poignant Rendering of Simon Gray’s ‘Pursuit’

A witty and rueful 1984 British play, Simon Gray’s “Common Pursuit,” materializes on “Great Performances” tonight (at 9 on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15).

It’s a faithful reincarnation of a humorously poignant play about youthful idealism, the devastating passage of time and the subtle disintegration of lifelong friendships.

Gray’s dramatic affinity for academia and literary in-fighting (“Butley,” “Quartermain’s Terms”) is centered in this case on affable and brainy Cambridge chums who start up a literary magazine called the Common Pursuit to showcase their advanced ideas.

The production’s opening scenes (hauntingly reprised at the fade-out) capture the glow of students on an intellectual binge for whom the world will never be as happy again.

These golden opening moments, as the characters gather on a sunny morning in their rumpled magazine office in the Cambridge Quad, set the tone of a story that jumps through 15 years of tumultuous changes in their lives. Marriages, romances, betrayals, compromises--the muck and ironies of life--gradually wear through their feverish plans and infectious elitism.

Reality, that implacable party pooper, takes over. The inspiring magazine editor (Kevin McNally) burns out, his beaming wife (Stella Gonet) has an affair with his mascot of a business partner (Andrew McCarthy), a jaunty, self-important writer (Tim Roth) jumps ship for a TV job, another early member (James Fleet) becomes an Oxford history professor who writes bogus biographies and shamelessly cheats on his wife. And so it goes.

Director Christopher Morahan and his fine cast, in keeping with the tone of the play, let none of this appear cynical or satirical. On the contrary, an affectionate kind of comical detachment underscores Gray’s work and this BBC production.