Playwright: Donald Margulies
At: Goodman, 170 N. Dearborn
Phone: (312) 443-5151; $30-$50
Runs through: April 5
At first glance, Dinner with Friends, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winner by Donald Margulies, would seem like pretty lightweight stuff, the kind of story you might see on the Lifetime cable channel. But that's part of Dinner with Friends' charm; it's deceptively simple. Margulies is a smart playwright and he uses this simple story of two married couples to mine deeper issues of marriage, friendship, and communication. He does all of this masterfully, using story, character development, and character action and interaction to get across his themes. It's a lesson to which many contemporary fiction writers and playwrights should pay attention.
Gabe (Scott Jaeck) and Karen (Mary Beth Fisher) have made a comfortable life for themselves as successful food writers. They work together, they travel together, they play together, and raise a family together. Theirs is an easy union, built on familiarity, mutual respect, shared values and interests, and, finally, the ability to tell each other what they think. They're far from perfect; Gabe is something of a milquetoast and Karen is a bit narrow-minded and rigid. But that's what makes them real people. For more than a decade, their closest friends have been Tom (James Krag) and Beth (Suellen Burton). What sets the play in motion is Beth's tearful confession that she and Tom are divorcing; Tom has found someone else. The breakup is the impetus for a lot of questions: how involved do we get in our friends' relationships? Do we take sides? Remain neutral? Offer support? To whom? And what about our own marriage? If friends we thought would be together until death do them part, how stable is our own union? These are the issues that Dinner with Friends explores, with naturalistic dialogue, sympathy, comedy, and conflict. In short, here is a good story by a masterful writer … but, unlike a Lifetime TV movie, really has something to say about how human beings connect.
Goodman Associate Producer Steve Scott takes the directorial reigns here, and this is where the Chicago premiere of Dinner with Friends falters. Scott shows skill and confidence in his handling of the quartet of actors he has to work with, and his pacing is right on target, moving the audience through the emotional highs and lows of the production with consummate skill. But even the best director can't compete with the problem at the core of the Goodman production. And that problem is choice. The Goodman is simply the wrong venue for Dinner with Friends. Its large Albert theater is simply too big to contain a story that cries out for intimacy and truly realistic touches. I saw the play a couple of years ago off-Broadway and it was staged in a small house, with a rotating set that created rooms that were decorated down to the very last detail … and the production transported viewers into the playwright's world. Goodman's effort, designed by Geoff Curley, seems lost on the deep, high stage of the Albert, and its efforts to create this very real world with telling 'touches' (rather than complete set decoration) takes us away from the reality the play requires. This Dinner with Friends never makes a credible home for itself, and thus fails to keep us completely absorbed.
A venue like Victory Gardens would have been far better suited for Dinner with Friends. In spite of seasoned performances, inspired direction, and workmanlike creative work, this dinner sinks because the Goodman forgot one thing: making the right choice for its house.