Theater Review—

‘Dinner With Friends’ Is Done Well By Town Players

By Julie Stern

The playbill for Town Players of Newtown says that in tribute to the late Evelyne Thomas, this year’s entire slate of productions has been planned with humor in mind. There are definitely some funny moments in Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends, which opened last weekend, but it is hardly a farce or a romp or a comic send-up. Rather, it is a thought provoking, serious play in which it is all too easy to recognize ourselves and the people we know, even as we realize that we don’t actually know them as well as we thought.

One of the fixtures of our modern, emancipated, geographically and socially mobile existence is the importance of friends. For many Americans today, friends are the new family: the people who make you feel connected and understood, in a way that mere relatives – far away, and different in their beliefs and values – do not.

The two couples in this play have formed such a tight unit ever since, following their own marriage, Gabe and Karen fixed up his best friend from college – Tom – with her good friend from work, Beth. For 12½ years, the four of them socialized together, vacationed together, celebrated holidays and minded each other’s children.

Dedicated “foodies,” they share a passionate interest in cooking (Gabe makes a good living as a food writer for gourmet magazines) and whatever humor there is in the play comes from comically elaborate discussions about meals.

The first scene (out of seven) ends, however, with Beth’s bombshell announcement that Tom is leaving her for a woman he met on one of his business trips. While Gabe and Karen try to reason with Tom, it is clear that this won’t work. They will get a divorce.

The second act opens with a flashback scene to the day the two first met at Gabe and Karens’ summer cottage. Sparks are definitely kindled between them, but there are also clear signs to anyone looking for them that Beth is a high maintenance girl and Tom is a budding narcissist.

After the divorce, as Tom meets with Gabe, and Beth meets with Karen, they each look great and claim to be happier than ever. Life is so much easier without the responsibilities of marriage, without having anyone make demands on you, or pass judgments. Beth has found a “playmate” in David, a former colleague of Tom’s, who is teaching her to rollerblade.  Tom and Nancy go running every morning and come home to make love in the shower before going to work. She buys his ties. The sex is fantastic!

The children? “Well, we stayed together for 12 years for their sake, but they’ll get over it!  We can’t sacrifice our happiness just for them.”

As played by Kristi McKeever and Chris Luongo, Beth, and especially Tom, are extremely unsympathetic characters. Tom whines and lashes out, alternating self pity with abusive put downs of his wife. He not only demands that she let him go to pursue his happiness, but he berates her for telling Gabe and Beth, so that they will side with her. He is not ready to give up this important friendship, just because he wants to leave his wife and kids.

But the center cannot hold, as Yeats said – at least in this friendship. While Tom and Beth go off in search of recaptured youth, Charlie Cowles as Gabe, and Danette Riso as Karen, are left to face middle age, and responsibility, and mortality alone. Still, they are in the aloneness, together.

It’s hard to know the truth of what goes on inside someone else’s marriage. Over time, many of us have known friends who surprised and disappointed us with their choice to split and go in search of the pleasure dome. It leaves you bereft and disappointed, and lonely. That is what this play captures so well. It’s a very good play, and director Larry Kinnear has done a fine job managing his actors.