Fat Chance

by Simon Gray

In early 1995, the 'Stephen Fry quits' drama spawned dozens of newspaper articles on the runaway actor. After receiving generally good reviews, Simon Gray's Cell Mates mysteriously metamorphosed into a 'bad' play and one from which the overworked Fry had been right to walk away. The media continued to be the plucky understudy, the dependable Simon Ward, the angry playwright, the righteous self-justification of the critics and more and more on Stephen Fry. Yet Rik Mayall, the other star of the play, and a continuing strong presence on stage, was noticeably absent from the welter of words. Betrayal is in the air but what really happened and why?
Fat Chance, Simon Gray's compulsively readable account of life on the edge of a nervous breakdown, charts the real drama behind the media drama behind the stage drama.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre

Paperback

First published December 31, 1995

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

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

'What the fuck is he doing in Bruges`"

In 1995 Simon Gray wrote and directed "Cell Mates". The play is essentially a two hander and he seemed to have landed the dream team of Rik Mayall and Stephen Fry for the main parts. Alas, after reading the first reviews (to the consternation of colleagues, friends and family who feared the worst) Stephen Fry left the production (and indeed the country) without warning. The play closed soon after.

Fans of Simon Grays play diaries (and there should be many) will know that Gray worked on the verge of a nervous breakdown at the best of times and so his anguish, so perfectly expressed here, is hardly surprising. Fortunately for us all, for expiation and (I assume) revenge Gray dipped his pen in acid and wrote this account.

This particular dish is not always served cold (see quote above) but it is delicious (did someone say "schadenfreude"?) and there is some wonderfully cool writing; in answer to his own question set out above Gray writes;

"a beautiful city, fine restaurants. And a lot of Belgians who share Stephen's appetites, which would make him feel that he was in congenial company, I suppose. Dining in his gastric peer group. I made an enraged peroration along these lines......possibly unfair to Stephen, who might, for all I knew, have gone to Bruge for its spiritual sustenance - its cathedral, say, its small religious sanctuaries."

Ouch.

Simon Gray died earlier this year. As Stephen Fry might say "Bless you. God Bless you."

[Saurs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultra-fictionalized, bratty account of Fry quitting Cell Mates, taking his ball, and going home. Mayall is depicted as a minor saint, World's Best Father, and The Greatest, Most Emotionally Generous Actor to Have Ever Lived, while Gray tries his best to link Fry's emotional instability, haughtiness, and egocentrism to his homosexuality in the most bigoted fashion possible. Actually made me (almost) dig Fry again; if you can make somebody like Simon Gray sound this pitiful and wounded, you've done the world a favor.

[Wilde Sky · Rating 2 out of 5]

An author describes what happened to his play when one of the main actors quit.

I didn't warm to the author (at all) and I'm not really a fan of any of the people mentioned (at least those I recognised) - so most of this book left a bit cold.

[Ross Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been an admirer of Gray's work ever since I saw Butley (the 1974 version with Alan Bates), and his production diaries are usually pretty insightful. Here, then, we have the dish on the Cell Mates debacle, which led to Fry fleeing to Bruges and Rik Mayall having to hold the performance together practically by himself (according to Gray, at least). The book is as much a testament to Mayall's strength of character as it is to a total injustice: One of these players, a perennially suicidal narcissist, still walks among us whilst the other, a brave, warm, and utterly fucking funny individual, is now dead at 56. Mayall was silly, mugging, and full of passion. As Gray observes as he got to know him, he could range far further. In contrast, Fry only knows how to play himself. Small wonder that those critical reviews of the play cut so deep.

[Anthony Bolton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only the funniest theatre book I`ve ever read but the funniest book , period.
I`m not sure why. It helps to have familiar characters from real life you can see in three dimensions, as it were ,although I guess that`s a bit lazy.
But the sly sardonic tone of Grays voice and the sense of mounting hysterical panic and exasperation at his predicament and his and others` characters is hilarious,
I think I`ve read this around ten times .
Funnier than Wodehouse and unlike W it won`t make you nauseous .

[Victoria Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about what happened when Stephen Fry disappeared to Belgium when he was supposed to be performing in Simon Gray's play Cell Mates. It is a very good book to read if you're feeling depressed because it is short and incredibly funny. Simon Gray spares no one, least of all himself. I defy anyone to read it without laughing out loud at least once.

[Andrew Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the more bitter books I've read (somewhat understandably, but still...), documenting what happened when Stephen Fry left a West End show and the consequences of those actions. An awkward read which veers from insight to settling scores in equal measure.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Gray provides readers with a most eloquent account of the trials and tribulations as writer and director of the play, Cell Mates, from which Stephen Fry fled a leading role in a confused and self-absorbed manner to much media attention shortly after the West End debut in 1995. The play was somewhat doomed from that point, and despite the efforts of the remaining cast (including Rik Mayall), it closed some weeks later.

This account spares few punches in expressing the mixed emotions that any director must have felt in such a predicament and during the subsequent attempts to rescue the play, critically and financially.

Rik Mayall is heroically portrayed as a sensitive individual exposing hidden anxieties mixed with the aspirations of an ambitious actor honing his stagecraft, together with samples of mischieviousness of the calibre expected from a comedy actor (SG dedicates this account to Mayall). Readers can form their own judgements on how Stephen Fry is characterised.

As well as giving us another side to the tabloid journalistic gluttony that surrounded Fry's AWOL departure, this memoir also serves as a delightfully amusing account of the theatrical process, from first draft to first night. For fans of the sadly-missed Simon Gray this is another wit-laden, mildly grumpy, and wholeheartedly engaging addition to his series of memoirs.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably written as therapy more than anything else. An account of Stephen Fry's 'bunk' from the author's production of "Cell Mates". Interesting but in the end unsatisfying because the big question (WHY?) remains unanswered

[Nick]

Written in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

[Rowena Vaughan]

Vituperative - but well written.