Dinner with Friends

Rating:
Summary: Real people, real issues, and hard questions.
Review: Donald Margulies' "Dinner with Friends" received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, a well-deserved award. The play deals with two couples who have been close for a long time, but now one couple is going through a divorce. Throughout the play, relationships are questioned and reorganized. The still-married couple find themselves assessing the strength of their own relationship and mourning the little corner of their world which dies when their friends divorce.

"Dinner with Friends" is a rare gem--a questing, moral play that takes an honest look at the issues of commitment and fidelity in today's world. I don't think I've seen a new play which delved so deep and true into the heart of an everyday issue, and with everyday characters, since David Mamet's "Oleanna." The last two scenes bare the relationships and souls of the characters so fully (and, thankfully, without overt hysterics) that I literally got the chills.

In scene three of the second act Gabe meets his friend Tom a few months after Tom and his wife have split. Tom is living with his travel agent girlfriend, and Gabe quickly tires of Tom's rationalizations and his descriptions of the fantasy life he has constructed around himself. Tom talks fanatically about his newfound freedom, and Gabe tells him he's starting to sound "like a Moonie." Gabe finally voices the essential problem he has with Tom's decision to leave his family. Gabe says, "The key to civilization, I think, is fighting the impulse to chuck it all." Then Tom tries to tell Gabe that maybe Gabe's own marriage isn't all that it appears to be; Tom has heard Gabe complain in the past, and Tom says that he knows the signs of trouble. The difference between the two men, however, is that Gabe believes in working at his marriage and cannot imagine ever giving up. "You don't get it," Gabe says. "I _cling_ to Karen; I _cling_ to her. Imagining a life without her doesn't excite me, it just makes me anxious."

Rating:
Summary: Real people, real issues, and hard questions.
Review: Donald Margulies' "Dinner with Friends" received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, a well-deserved award. The play deals with two couples who have been close for a long time, but now one couple is going through a divorce. Throughout the play, relationships are questioned and reorganized. The still-married couple find themselves assessing the strength of their own relationship and mourning the little corner of their world which dies when their friends divorce.

"Dinner with Friends" is a rare gem--a questing, moral play that takes an honest look at the issues of commitment and fidelity in today's world. I don't think I've seen a new play which delved so deep and true into the heart of an everyday issue, and with everyday characters, since David Mamet's "Oleanna." The last two scenes bare the relationships and souls of the characters so fully (and, thankfully, without overt hysterics) that I literally got the chills.

In scene three of the second act Gabe meets his friend Tom a few months after Tom and his wife have split. Tom is living with his travel agent girlfriend, and Gabe quickly tires of Tom's rationalizations and his descriptions of the fantasy life he has constructed around himself. Tom talks fanatically about his newfound freedom, and Gabe tells him he's starting to sound "like a Moonie." Gabe finally voices the essential problem he has with Tom's decision to leave his family. Gabe says, "The key to civilization, I think, is fighting the impulse to chuck it all." Then Tom tries to tell Gabe that maybe Gabe's own marriage isn't all that it appears to be; Tom has heard Gabe complain in the past, and Tom says that he knows the signs of trouble. The difference between the two men, however, is that Gabe believes in working at his marriage and cannot imagine ever giving up. "You don't get it," Gabe says. "I _cling_ to Karen; I _cling_ to her. Imagining a life without her doesn't excite me, it just makes me anxious."

Rating:
Summary: Not that insightful
Review: I found the author's treatment of middle-aged crises and divorces a bit trite and stereotypical. It reads just like any other situation I've seen in movies, real life, etc. Being a baby boomer myself, with friends who have divorced and some of them for similar reasons, I didn't think Mr. Margulies had any terrific insights into the situation.

He definitely created four distinct personalities, and none of them were solely "the good guy" or "the bad guy", but I think, based on the reviews I'd read before reading this play, and based on seeing a performance of "Collected Stories", I expected more. I think "Collected Stories" was far more deserving of a Pulitzer.

Rating:
Summary: "...then all of a sudden the earth cracks open."
Review: I listened to part of this play during a radio broadcast as I was driving to an appointment the other day. I found it compelling and disturbing, upsetting and fascinating...all at once. It doesn't read with the same energy it has when well-acted, but is nevertheless worth the hour or two it takes to read it.

Just the idea of being in a committed relationship is frightening for many people, and the reality can cause one to feel trapped (or alive--or both). "Dinner with Friends" captures many of the unsettling aspects of the marriages of two separate couples. Though one marriage remains intact as the other falls apart and becomes nothing but history (and two kids), the way conversations, emotions and events play out are not exactly as expected.

Although I disliked all of the characters in this play--they're simply too fake and uptight for my taste--I think "Dinner with Friends" has enough value to make reading it worthwhile. Not only does Margulies's play highlight many of the specters which lurk around the edges of some committed relationships; it also brings to light the important and interesting distinction between story and truth in everyday life.

Rating:
Summary: I'll be pondering for weeks to come...
Review: I'll avoid giving a synopsis as so many have already. I had the pleasure of seeing this play on stage. I had a conversation afterwards with one of the actors (Gabe) who is a good friend. There's one thing in particular I'd like to point out from the conversation with him. He told me that the play "doesn't read well" - you wind up thinking it's just another overwrought "Thirty-Something". But, it "plays" entirely differently. I will freely admit that the complicated issues brought up by the play had me crying most of the way through it. (Yes, I'm a guy.) Who's right? Who's wrong? Uh... yes! They all are... both right and wrong.

It would certainly be easy to dismiss this work as just more "Thirty-Something" or as being too "Boomer"-esque. I'm not a Boomer. I'm an X-er, as a matter of fact, and it's resonating very loudly. My partner and I have struggled with the issues raised, as have partners of any generation, and will for generations to come.

I don't want to discourage anyone from buying the book/script. But please remember, this is a play. Let in be enacted in your mind as you read. Feel the situation. If it's totally foreign, try to go outside of yourself and make it your own. The depth of the drama will come through.

Rating:
Summary: Insight Well Seen
Review: Last season's foursome relationship play, Closer, by Patrick Marber, has many deserving admirers, but I'm partial to Dinner with Friends, and not just for the Pulitzer award, or because it's an American play, not British. What Margulies does so deftly is create individuals, couples, and friendships, all of which are distinct entities ... in a play that shows great insight into my generation's struggle with intimacy. Reading or watching the play I find myself hating the divorcing couple, yet unable to dismiss them. They are fully credible characters, acting out of clearly realized inner needs. I would recomment Donald Margulies' play to anyone who appreciates subtle realsim, peppered with subtle insight and humor.

Rating:
Summary: Excruciating Dinner Party
Review: Margulies's play is interesting, but certainly not deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. The analyzation of characters is fairly sterotypical at times. In other instances, character portrayal is simply poor, as I find with Gabe. Gabe, at times, seems to border on being the "foppish" stock character of classical comedy; in the second act, however, he becomes more serious, seeming to deviate from his previous personality traits.

Also, elements of the play are unrealistic. For instance: rage can be an aphrodisiac, but two people who are physically beating each other do not make such a quick transition to love-making as Margulies suggests. Also, Margulies's use of conversation is not believable. Characters are always interrupting each other, which is certainly true in real life. However, in this play they do it constantly, and nobody ever seems to notice. The characters do not become upset at each other, despite the fact that other characters continually interrupt them.

An interesting play, certainly. But not nearly as good as one would believe, considering its awards.

Rating:
Summary: Riposte
Review: Reading an unfavorable online comment from "Plattypus", I came across this sentence -- "Also, Margulies's use of conversation is not believable. Characters are always interrupting each other, which is certainly true in real life. However, in this play they do it constantly, and nobody ever seems to notice." This is a statement that has to be challenged. People in conversation -- particularly heated conversation -- interrupt each other (and themselves) all of the time. I have done experiments transcribing tape-recorded conversations that bear this out. If you're gonna knock a work, do so with a valid argument.

Rating:
Summary: Affecting. Modernistic. Real. Sad. Annoying.
Review: The euphoric and blissful bubble that a functioning relationship can father is a wonderful thing. When two individuals are linked by common interests, shared ideals and beliefs, nothing in respects to a career, money or fame can come close to it; it is a wonderful, natural high to experience true love. However, what happens when a marriage does not work and the foundation that eventually led to that marriage was an erroneous one? In Dinner With Friends, playwright David Margulies explores just such a situation.

We have two couples, Beth and Tom and Karen and Gabe, all somewhere in their forties and all the best of friends; the former couple, Tom in particular, has grown rather weary about his workaday existence as a lawyer. His energy for life has waned dramatically, and who does he pour his blame on? His artist wife Beth. She in turn blames him for not being open enough. Thus, the blame game starts to take root. The latter couple, Karen and Gabe, get woven into this battle due to their friendship, a friendship that slowly begins to crack when they try to comprehend the depth of their friend's unhappiness, i.e. the banal conversations, the duty of paying off a mortgage, the raising of kids, etc. It is essentially the story of four baby-boomers who do not like the turn their lives are taking. One couple breaks up, and in the process of doing so, they almost develope a 'plastic' or 'artificial' Ken and Barbie personality, that because I'm divorced now I jog more and have better sex. An arrogant happiness developes. That artificiality affects Karen and Gabe deeply, because they debate if their friendship was one of a genuine nature. The good times of the past are no more, so what is there to look forward to?

Karen and Gabe are scared at the transition that their 'old' friends took, for if it happened to Tom and Beth, it could happen to anyone. And therein is where the power of this play lies: that divorce can happen to anyone.

In its own right the play is smartly written: vibrant, sharp, stinging, fast-paced and edgy. A smart, wry drama about an unpleasant and common issue.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy winner
Review: There's always a backlash when a play wins the Pulitzer -- the usual chorus from the "Oh yeah?" crowd. I've been a part of that chorus on occasion. I do think there have been some mystifying winners and losers. (How SIX DEGREES lost to LOST IN YONKERS still has me scratching my head.) But this isn't a head-scratcher to me. DINNER WITH FRIENDS is not only well-observed in its surface details, there are volumes to explore in what's implicit. Plays usually begin with disrupting events as a way of questioning the usually unquestioned assumptions, and this DWT does with the precision of Updike. This is accomplished without easy moralizing, with an awareness of the darkness that sits just beyond the range of the living room lamp's pool of comforting light.

One final thought: I'm getting tired of easy dissing of plays and other works because they are so-called "boomer" chronicles. To assume that -- because a play deals with characters from a certain historical/socio-economic background -- it isn't to be taken seriously is as bigoted as dismissing a work because it deals with black or gay or Lithuanian concerns. People don't lose their claims to be respected as human beings just because you envy them.