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Dinner with Friends
Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Filled with humor, warmth, insight and wisdom, Dinner with Friends is a modern day masterpiece on the destruction of today's marriage. Through Margulies's flawless use of language and his ability to convey the truest of dialogue and characterization, we watch, as the two couples do, our closest friends going through a wrenching breakup. Not only does he create vivid detail of a marriage in decline, he also brilliantly depicts the couple's closest friends, and how this new mirror to their own marriage sends them through a whirlwind of raw emotion and self-reflection.
Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.
Filled with humor, warmth, insight and wisdom, Dinner with Friends is a modern day masterpiece on the destruction of today's marriage. Through Margulies's flawless use of language and his ability to convey the truest of dialogue and characterization, we watch, as the two couples do, our closest friends going through a wrenching breakup. Not only does he create vivid detail of a marriage in decline, he also brilliantly depicts the couple's closest friends, and how this new mirror to their own marriage sends them through a whirlwind of raw emotion and self-reflection.
Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.
86 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2000
28 people are currently reading
1533 people want to read
About the author
Donald Margulies
40 books30 followersBorn in Brooklyn in 1954, Donald Margulies grew up in Trump Village, a Coney Island housing project built by Donald Trump's father. Margulies was exposed early to the theatre. His father, a wallpaper salesman, played show tunes on the family hi-fi and, despite a limited income, often took his children to Manhattan to attend Broadway plays and musicals.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 132 reviews
May 25, 2016
Marriages are complicated, and this play is touching some of the most sensitive points with good humor and lots of drama. About how friends and relationships are forming, but also how fragile they are, and how easily they can get destroyed. What would you do if as a couple, your best friends-couple is separating? Are you going to choose a side? Is there even any other option? Are you going to rethink about how do you treat your friends? Are you going to rethink who are your friends for real?
Great dialogs, funny moments, sadness, and some small pieces of reality.
Great dialogs, funny moments, sadness, and some small pieces of reality.
July 12, 2010
This play works well for as a stimulant for conversation or as an evocative little story about the passing of 'friendships'. The losses of 'friendship' (or perhaps the lost opportunity for a real friendship) in this story was sad to me. It makes you think about what really is a friendship and what is just a 'prolonged acquaintance'. It seems like the author is 'poking pins' at superficial friendships among married couples. It is also interesting that the author seems to demonstrate that Tom and Beth should never have married in the first place, and seemed to get married primarily because of the pressures (on single people) to get married. Society sure does put pressure on singles to get married, and this does negatively affect couples' decisions to get married. Why can't society more easily accept single people? The author doesn't really explore this question, but does provide the stimulus for conversation.
I think the major weakness for me (with this story) is the lack of 'back and forth' in the dialogue and the story. In the start, the characters are fairly repressed and I would expect more of a catharsis when the shackles come off, but the two final conversations between old friends (between Karen/Beth and Gabe/Tom) are strangely muted and lack a lively 'back and forth'. There is some sorely needed confrontation, but the conversations don't seem very deep, very meaningful, or very personal. Both conversations end when they should take off. The 'old wounds' are not really dealt with or even talked about enough. Perhaps the author's intent is to show how boring married people become, and he succeeded at that (within the confines of this story). But repression doesn't make for great info-tainment until the catharsis comes.
Also, it seems like the author is promoting the Tom/Beth break-up. This is a 'tables turned' story as it seemed that Gabe/Karen are the happy ones (at the start of the story) and Tom/Beth surpass them (in happiness) at the end of the story as they have found new more compatible mates. In the end, the story seemd foreboding against the couple that stayed married (Gabe/Karen) and positive about the divorcees(Tom/Beth). If I am interpreting this right, then this seems simplistic to me. Perhaps a more accurate story would show the tables turning yet again against Tom/Beth. Do you think that Tom and Beth got it made now? And what about their children? I realize that time is limited in a play, but the ending seemed too smug to me.
Gabe is the most disappointing character to me. As the 'rep' for 40-someting married men, his arguments for staying in a marriage came across as pretty poor to me. There surely is more to staying in it (marriage) for the kids, for your friends, and for the good of civilization (summarizing the crux of Gabe's argument). In other words, it surely is more than a 'duty' to stay in a marriage. Gabe never really made his arguments either very personal or very deep. Perhaps the author was intending to make Gabe seem so limited.
But, it is a heck of a stimulus for thought and conversation. It sure has been for me, as I am a 40-something married guy with two teenage children.
I think the major weakness for me (with this story) is the lack of 'back and forth' in the dialogue and the story. In the start, the characters are fairly repressed and I would expect more of a catharsis when the shackles come off, but the two final conversations between old friends (between Karen/Beth and Gabe/Tom) are strangely muted and lack a lively 'back and forth'. There is some sorely needed confrontation, but the conversations don't seem very deep, very meaningful, or very personal. Both conversations end when they should take off. The 'old wounds' are not really dealt with or even talked about enough. Perhaps the author's intent is to show how boring married people become, and he succeeded at that (within the confines of this story). But repression doesn't make for great info-tainment until the catharsis comes.
Also, it seems like the author is promoting the Tom/Beth break-up. This is a 'tables turned' story as it seemed that Gabe/Karen are the happy ones (at the start of the story) and Tom/Beth surpass them (in happiness) at the end of the story as they have found new more compatible mates. In the end, the story seemd foreboding against the couple that stayed married (Gabe/Karen) and positive about the divorcees(Tom/Beth). If I am interpreting this right, then this seems simplistic to me. Perhaps a more accurate story would show the tables turning yet again against Tom/Beth. Do you think that Tom and Beth got it made now? And what about their children? I realize that time is limited in a play, but the ending seemed too smug to me.
Gabe is the most disappointing character to me. As the 'rep' for 40-someting married men, his arguments for staying in a marriage came across as pretty poor to me. There surely is more to staying in it (marriage) for the kids, for your friends, and for the good of civilization (summarizing the crux of Gabe's argument). In other words, it surely is more than a 'duty' to stay in a marriage. Gabe never really made his arguments either very personal or very deep. Perhaps the author was intending to make Gabe seem so limited.
But, it is a heck of a stimulus for thought and conversation. It sure has been for me, as I am a 40-something married guy with two teenage children.
June 5, 2020
Marriage.
It is a fifty/fifty roll of the dice that it will succeed (and I am unsure how to define, ‘succeed.’).
So, if half of the pairings end up in divorce, what about they who stay together? Are they happy? Or are they obligated to it because of family, religion, society, children, and so forth?
The ones who stay together, are they still in love? Or have they learned how to ‘manage’ their relationship, which sounds a bit corporate? And after 10, 20, 30 years, what is the nature of their love (another word I ache to define)?
Or are the couples that remain merely lazy, co-dependent, comfortable enough, or scared of change? I do not have any answers. Just questions.
Friends for years, they dine together often. They are in their mid-forties, a potentially precarious time for many marriages.
One couple is amid dissolution.
The other couple, their friends, are apparently happy and cheery and do all their chores together.
But each couple, as the separation plays out, is affected in their singular way.
And within the two duos exist two distinct individuals, husband and wife, each retaining their own perceptions of what is going on between themselves and with their friends, the faltering pair.
A stellar play with crackling dialogue.
It is a fifty/fifty roll of the dice that it will succeed (and I am unsure how to define, ‘succeed.’).
So, if half of the pairings end up in divorce, what about they who stay together? Are they happy? Or are they obligated to it because of family, religion, society, children, and so forth?
The ones who stay together, are they still in love? Or have they learned how to ‘manage’ their relationship, which sounds a bit corporate? And after 10, 20, 30 years, what is the nature of their love (another word I ache to define)?
Or are the couples that remain merely lazy, co-dependent, comfortable enough, or scared of change? I do not have any answers. Just questions.
Friends for years, they dine together often. They are in their mid-forties, a potentially precarious time for many marriages.
One couple is amid dissolution.
The other couple, their friends, are apparently happy and cheery and do all their chores together.
But each couple, as the separation plays out, is affected in their singular way.
And within the two duos exist two distinct individuals, husband and wife, each retaining their own perceptions of what is going on between themselves and with their friends, the faltering pair.
A stellar play with crackling dialogue.
May 12, 2018
Do we always look at the marriage — or the dissolution of marriage — of our friends through the prism of our own experience? Dinner with Friends really made me ponder that point. And I still have no answer.
June 2, 2015
یک نمایشنامه ی مدرن و اجتماعی. درباب دو زوج که یکی از آن ها در شرف طلاق است و سپس ادامه ی نمایش باتکیه بر جدایی این دو نفر و اتفاقاتی که زوج دیگر را تحت تاثیر قرار می دهد. همچنین، در زیر مجموعه ی همه ی روابط و همه ی این روایت لایه ی پنهان و تهدید کننده ی دروغ دیده می شود.
April 23, 2009
Two sets of friends in their 40s - Gabe and Karen (who love to cook), and Tom and Beth. When one couple splits, there is sadness, anger, alliances are made, rethought. This interesting play has moments of both drama and humor, and it examines just how friendships and marriages are forged, and how they are damaged. Believable characters and thought-provoking dialog.
April 8, 2014
I listened to this audio performance this evening. Well done with some real insights about how people and couples react and talk to each other. Funny and heartbreaking with passion on the side!
January 22, 2022
امیدوارم هیچ وقت اون تنهایی که من تجربه کردم رو تجربه نکنی گیب
October 21, 2012
2.5
Whatever it was that earned this play a Pulitzer clearly eluded me.
Yes, there were places where it made me pause to reread the character's thought-provoking words and reflect. And I appreciate the play's candid look at the sacrifices of marriage and family life, sacrifices that those who enter into it blindly or with little consideration fail to recognize until much later when they are faced with insurmountable disappointments or irreconcilable differences and bitterness toward their partners/lovers. The book touches on the cut-and-dry societal pressure for marriage as a prescribed milestone--with the prospect of kids to follow, another milestone--while also suggesting an innate desire to find love in a romantic companion, as all characters seem to avoid being single like the plague. But just as crucial to the "success" of a marriage as the initial union of compatible/complementary personalities and values is the compatible meshing of each individual's evolution as each journeys through life. Can a currently happy couple evolve successfully together? A crucial question that defies an answer, for such as answer requires prescience. How many of such seemingly happy couples are unconsciously deceiving themselves, merely fulfilling roles expected of them?
All these questions, the work raises ... and, yet, I ultimately find this play trite and banal. It doesn't present this age-old subject in new light or from an particularly interesting new angle. The ending was ehh.
IN CONCLUSION: This is a largely mediocre play with a few good lines, one good scene, and a number of dishes that made me salivate. It doesn't add much to what the average person already knows about relationships. It does, however, make me wonder how much I'm willing to suffer through a double date with a sadistically perfect couple if there is limone-mandorle-polenta involved for dessert ...
Whatever it was that earned this play a Pulitzer clearly eluded me.
Yes, there were places where it made me pause to reread the character's thought-provoking words and reflect. And I appreciate the play's candid look at the sacrifices of marriage and family life, sacrifices that those who enter into it blindly or with little consideration fail to recognize until much later when they are faced with insurmountable disappointments or irreconcilable differences and bitterness toward their partners/lovers. The book touches on the cut-and-dry societal pressure for marriage as a prescribed milestone--with the prospect of kids to follow, another milestone--while also suggesting an innate desire to find love in a romantic companion, as all characters seem to avoid being single like the plague. But just as crucial to the "success" of a marriage as the initial union of compatible/complementary personalities and values is the compatible meshing of each individual's evolution as each journeys through life. Can a currently happy couple evolve successfully together? A crucial question that defies an answer, for such as answer requires prescience. How many of such seemingly happy couples are unconsciously deceiving themselves, merely fulfilling roles expected of them?
All these questions, the work raises ... and, yet, I ultimately find this play trite and banal. It doesn't present this age-old subject in new light or from an particularly interesting new angle. The ending was ehh.
IN CONCLUSION: This is a largely mediocre play with a few good lines, one good scene, and a number of dishes that made me salivate. It doesn't add much to what the average person already knows about relationships. It does, however, make me wonder how much I'm willing to suffer through a double date with a sadistically perfect couple if there is limone-mandorle-polenta involved for dessert ...
June 22, 2009
I think seeing this as a play would have been better. The intracaticies of 2 couples relationships were laid bare for all to see, for better for worse. Some of it was endearing and some of it very sad. It make me think about what it means to have a successful relationship, what it takes to have one, and more importantly, the variety of definitions of "successful".
Read
December 19, 2023Read this play in one sitting in my attic today. It seemed sort of familiar and I looked it up later and realized I'd seen the movie adaption about 11 years ago. Reminded me of an episode of Thirtysomething , not a bad thing.
August 14, 2025
A brilliantly brutal play about the true nature of friendship and marriage. It’s been years since I was able to read something in one sitting but I couldn’t put this down. Funny, sentimental and raw.
Five stars.
Five stars.
June 5, 2024
[3.5/5] it was really really hard to care about the characters, i probably will forget that play very easily but it still had a lot of interesting different voices on marriage, commitment, etc
also i'm just a student, i've never been married; maybe that's why i felt very unempathetic to the entire story
also i'm just a student, i've never been married; maybe that's why i felt very unempathetic to the entire story
January 1, 2016
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 developed a 'plastic' or 'artificial' Ken and Barbie personality, that because I'm divorced now I jog more and have better sex. An arrogant happiness developed. 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.
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 developed a 'plastic' or 'artificial' Ken and Barbie personality, that because I'm divorced now I jog more and have better sex. An arrogant happiness developed. 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.
September 25, 2023
I understand the point of this play, but I did not enjoy it. Tom and Beth were insufferable. They constantly victimized themselves and made it really hard to read. I didn’t care for any other characters except maybe the children, who were mentioned briefly and were never in a scene (expect for the yelling from the upstairs). It was a quick read though, which I enjoyed because as I stated the characters were not likable. All that being said, Donald Margulies did a great job creating distinct voices and vibrant conversations between the characters. I appreciate the work he did, I just don’t think this play was for me.
January 17, 2015
Riveting listen - what an outstanding performance! The dialogue is great, and pulls you right into the story - actually it grabs you and doesn't let you go until the curtain falls at the end. Lots of food for thought here, and the story leaves you with lots of unanswered questions, and the ending is not a happily ever after (the way I read it). So, bit of a downer. Oh well, I love my HEA's... but still. This is superb in audio! The actors who performed this were stellar. Bravo! Standing ovation!
July 25, 2014
I enjoyed this play very much, and as a middle-aged married man with 2 kids, I can relate to it directly.
Marguilies' gift is not just with the topics, but in the dialogue. This play has some of the most realistic dialogue between couples and friends I have read. These characters are very relatable as real people, it's not caricatures as is so common with modern plays.
Not a super-encouraging story, but I highly recommend.
Marguilies' gift is not just with the topics, but in the dialogue. This play has some of the most realistic dialogue between couples and friends I have read. These characters are very relatable as real people, it's not caricatures as is so common with modern plays.
Not a super-encouraging story, but I highly recommend.
September 4, 2008
Although I don't find the writing to be particularly spectacular, I felt as if this was the first and possibly only time that I have ever really related to a fictional character. I appreciate that for once, a story about relationships, isn't written from the troubled couple's point of view, but rather their friends who get frustrated with their nonsense, and still try to remain faithful friends.
January 21, 2015
I know plays rely on dialogue, but there's a way to do it that isn't entirely explicating. For me this felt awkward to read, stilted almost. More subtlety would have been nice, perhaps, not just people yelling at each other. I did think the ending was nice.
July 19, 2007
we're rich we have issues we live on the east coast blah blah blah
August 21, 2008
I can't wait for middle-age so that I can be in this play.
February 8, 2018
Well written but a bit old hat, even for something that is now almost two decades old, I feel like there are better takes on this subject, but this is still a good one.
December 28, 2024
Really good contemporary drama with a focus on middle aged life, without being overly pessimistic
“You love it when I’m a mess (…) As long as I’m artsy and incompetent everything is
fine, the minute I show any sign of being on equal footing as you forget about it.”
“You love it when I’m a mess (…) As long as I’m artsy and incompetent everything is
fine, the minute I show any sign of being on equal footing as you forget about it.”
February 17, 2023
I don't like marital screaming. If I wanted to listen to it, I'd get married again.
June 11, 2023
Excellent writing, largely vapid characters. DM has done better on bigger topics than white wealthy malaise.
May 6, 2019
Very realistic portrayal of mid-life affecting couples
September 26, 2020
فقط یه کم ترجمه مشکل داشت... ولی خود کتاب از بهترین نمایشنامه هایی بود که تاحالا خوندم، مثل یه فیلم کوتاه
October 31, 2011
There is a tendency, with much of post-modern American theatre, to split into two camps: the diversionary, imaginative, innovative theatre with a fresh look on the societal narrative, and the high-brow, conservative, critically-acclaimed cluster-f*** of jargon that Pulitzer Prize awards are made of. This play falls clumsily somewhere between these two camps. The latest in my quest to read through the Pulitzer-winning dramas to date, Donald Margulies's play centers on two married couples, both long-term friends. Couple A is comprised of Gabe and Karen, food writers with a cliche penchant for infusing their quirks and isms with their careers––tasting here, notating there--perfectly content in their little marital bubble. Then there are Tom and Beth, in the process of divorcing; two people so strung-out, so inconceivable, so insufferably annoying that no one in their right mind would ever associate with them long-term in real life. Tom is cheating on/leaving Beth on the merit of his own selfish needs/wants/feelings/etc., as Margulies illustrates, running at the mouth like Brando bemoaning that he could have been a contender. It is opaquely revealed that Beth had a fling of her own some ten years prior during her marriage to Tom. In the end, they find new partners and are allegedly brought back from the miserable abyss, much to the befuddlement/anxiety of Gabe and Karen.
In all fairness; Margulies is skilled with language and rhythm, though his stage direction can at times be irritating (instructing the characters to overlap their lines is one of the first tell-tale signs of the dreaded "Writer/Director"). His characters, though fleshed, are weak in their arguments on marriage: "I feel dead inside and miss my collegiate mojo, therefore I will have sex with this person I am attracted to in order to feel alive again" (trite), or "I have a duty to the kids, and to my wife, and to the life I have built and the duty of it all" (in the right place, but weak). Etcetera.
So, what do we have here, then? A fresh look into the psyche of the American marriage, stabbing at newer nuances for a new millennium, worthy of the Pulitzer? Or just a middle-of-the-road, fairly good play with the same message in re-named vessels? Read on.
In all fairness; Margulies is skilled with language and rhythm, though his stage direction can at times be irritating (instructing the characters to overlap their lines is one of the first tell-tale signs of the dreaded "Writer/Director"). His characters, though fleshed, are weak in their arguments on marriage: "I feel dead inside and miss my collegiate mojo, therefore I will have sex with this person I am attracted to in order to feel alive again" (trite), or "I have a duty to the kids, and to my wife, and to the life I have built and the duty of it all" (in the right place, but weak). Etcetera.
So, what do we have here, then? A fresh look into the psyche of the American marriage, stabbing at newer nuances for a new millennium, worthy of the Pulitzer? Or just a middle-of-the-road, fairly good play with the same message in re-named vessels? Read on.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2013
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.
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.
September 14, 2010
Summary: Karen and Gabe and Tom and Beth are two couples that have each been married for about twelve years. At a routine dinner, Beth reveals that Tom has left her—sending Karen and Gabe into examinations of their own marriage. These examinations include a long flashback-scene twelve years prior when they were newlyweds introducing Tom and Beth on a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. By the final act, Tom and Beth have both told Karen and Gabe that they are happier now that they are separated and that they have found new partners that make them both feel more alive. This makes Karen and Gabe question the banality of their marriage, but Gabe ultimately says (to Tom): "The key to civilization, I think, is fighting the impluse to chuck it all."
Thoughts: Another play in the collection where not much happens outside of a few interpersonal relationships. A hyper-realistic portrayal of how people who are very comfortable with each other fight featuring a few different examples: pointed glances across the room (don’t let the company see!), intense couple’s argumentation where the wronged party demands high status ending in violent (though fantastic!) sex and revelatory fighting between friends who have suppressed their small grievances and annoyances for years.
In a year where the other two nominees were Suzan-Lori Parks and August Wilson, it is perhaps interesting to note that this play is full of the privileged white experience. Karen and Gabe have just returned from a fantastic vacation to Italy, the two couples have vacationed together multiple times in Martha’s Vineyard and Karen, Gabe and Tom have decidedly white-collar day-jobs while Beth does not work and instead is allowed the financial freedom to pursue painting—which Tom, Gabe and Karen all “secretly” dislike.
Thoughts: Another play in the collection where not much happens outside of a few interpersonal relationships. A hyper-realistic portrayal of how people who are very comfortable with each other fight featuring a few different examples: pointed glances across the room (don’t let the company see!), intense couple’s argumentation where the wronged party demands high status ending in violent (though fantastic!) sex and revelatory fighting between friends who have suppressed their small grievances and annoyances for years.
In a year where the other two nominees were Suzan-Lori Parks and August Wilson, it is perhaps interesting to note that this play is full of the privileged white experience. Karen and Gabe have just returned from a fantastic vacation to Italy, the two couples have vacationed together multiple times in Martha’s Vineyard and Karen, Gabe and Tom have decidedly white-collar day-jobs while Beth does not work and instead is allowed the financial freedom to pursue painting—which Tom, Gabe and Karen all “secretly” dislike.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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