Fat Chance

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 fascinated: 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.