Marin Hinkle and Jeremy Shamos (photo: Jeremy Daniel)
Donald Margulies’ 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Dinner
With Friends” is unquestionably an intelligent and provocative play about two married
couples neither of whom during the course of it create much empathy either for
themselves or earn our sympathy for their disintegrating relationship to each
other and their respective partners. Despite this, a very admirable and commendably
acted revival has been produced by Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre.
My reaction to the play hasn’t notably changed since I first
saw it, and that is to continue to not give a hoot and holler whether
globe-hopping professional food journalist Gabe (Jeremy Shamos) and his editor
wife Karen (Marin Hinkle) have elevated their passion and interest in food at
the expense of their waning sexual interest in each other. My feelings are also quite neutral regarding
their best friends Tom (Darren Pettie) a lawyer and Beth (Heather Burns) an
artist who don’t seem deserving of any more that what they get, that is trying
to mold them themselves and their inherent incompatibilities into a marriage as
presumably as harmonic as the one lived by their role models Gabe and Karen.
It’s true that many marriages come and go, succeed and fail
as well as survive in a state of respectful resignation, and Margulies does
create a somewhat unique situation in which we see that Tom and Beth’s
marriage was from the start ill-advised,
misguided and based on a fantasy. What we witness, however, is the sudden change
in course for one couple whose failure to resonate in the light of their
friends ultimately proves to be an inadvertent blessing. It is certainly an opportunity
for personal growth and renewal, let alone finding new partners. What is equally
disheartening, perhaps poignant if you are sentimental, is how Gabe and Karen
fail to consider the possibility that a long-term relationship should not be
taken for granted.
Until that point arrives, the play, alternates scenes filled
with personal admissions of remorse, regrets and recriminations and those
fueled by disbelieve and denial. The action is spread between the present and
twelve years earlier, when the already married Gabe and Karen have manipulated
a blind date between Gabe’s college buddy Tom, and Karen’s co-worker Beth at
their summer home in Martha’s Vineyard. The kitchen of
the summer home is one of seven fluidly meshed scenes expertly designed by
Allen Moyer.
This play is not only a reminder that Margulies is a superb
writer (Time Stand Still,” “Collected Stories,” “Sight Unseen”) but how a basically
humdrum plot can be elevated by insight and wit. It is also a tribute to the
current cast that is able to vigorously mine the subtext of four basically
irritating characters that could otherwise grate on one’s nerves.
There is no fault to be found in the plot or the able
direction of Pam McKinnon, although the characters who propel it seem to be otherwise
caught on a treadmill of explaining to themselves and to each other. It is easy
to imagine the burden and the pressure on Beth and Tom as their life together
seems to have been fitted within the framework of their friends’ presumably perfect
marriage.
Pettie is excellent as Tom who has finally gotten plenty off
his chest by declaring he’s been unhappy in his marriage to Beth for years. He decides
that he wants out, and getting out could include the freeing himself from Gabe’s
influence. In a way Burns has the most curious, complex and exasperating character
to play, as her Beth makes the most unexpected u-turns among the characters. Karen
(fine acting by Hinkle) is certainly the most frustrated of the four by not having
read the signs of unrest in their friends. Hinkle’s performance is a wonderfully
subtle and expressive portrait of a wife whose desires are not exactly fulfilled
by a good dinner and a glass of wine. Shamos is terrific as the immovable but
hardly clueless Gabe whose head you may want to hit with the nearest cook book when
he can’t bring himself to be emotionally responsive to Karen.
“Dinner With Friends” is, nevertheless, filled with deftly
integrated psychological nuance that to fault its perspective is an unworthy
response. A good play is always worthy of revival especially one that gives you
plenty to think about.
“Dinner With Friends” (through April 13)
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre, 111
W. 46th Street
For tickets ($82.00) call 212.719.1300
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