The Art of Dining

by Tina Howe

Cal and Ellen are the owners and sole staff of a small, elegant gourmet restaurant. Cals main preoccupation is paying back the $75,000 it cost to start it up, and that means packing in the customers. Chef Ellen is preoccupied with the foods quality and stopping Cal from sampling the ingredients. The diners act out their own private dramas over dinner and their conversations are exquisite burlesques of contemporary attitudes. Theres a sensual middle aged couple who go into paroxysms of ecstasy just reading the menu and then theres three crass chic young career women. Finally, theres Elizabeth, a maladroit, shy and neurotic writer whos dining with her prospective publisher. Her actions and conversation are unintentionally hilarious and a delicious example of how not to act and what not to talk about while dining.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Fiction

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Tina Howe (November 21, 1937 – August 28, 2023) was an American playwright.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is unusual. The setting is a small, high-end restaurant run by a couple. She's all about the food, while he's about paying off the big loan, but also compulsive about eating the food, and booking more diners than she can handle. Three small groups of diners come in and as the play progresses, their reactions to food become emblematic, somewhat allegorical of their relationships, their personalities, even their sexuality. This would be difficult to stage with the need for a kitchen, working appliances, lots of food and spills that involve the costumes, but I'd love to see a production that pulled it off. One slight hesitation: we've all been exposed to a lot more foodie television since this was written, does the food vocabulary still hold up?

[Debra Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hysterical. Would love to see this play performed.

[Kaitlyn Elmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every character in this play is irritating.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cal and Ellen are living their dream. He quit a $95,000/year job as a New York lawyer to go $75,000 into debt and open a high-end restaurant in an old home where his wife works her magic at the stove. [The amounts are expressed in 1979 dollars.] As befits a play about food, this one is all about appetites: hers to cook, his to eat compulsively, those of the diners who make up the cast. The play reveals the relationships three tables of diners to food. This, in turn, reveals their sensual, sexual and social appetites, as well. The resulting compote is delicious. Tina Howe has a remarkable literary pedigree. Her father was a new commentator on CBS, her mother an artist, her uncle a law professor at Harvard, her grandfather a biographer and poet, and her great grandfather the Episcopal Bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Although not as well known as her play "Painting Churches," "The Art of Dining" was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

[Brandon Leighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this play as a consideration for my fall production at school. It is probably a little too adult for my students, but it is an interesting contemplation on the nature of desire ("appetite," to use the playwright's words). I thought some of the scenes were a little silly. I also thought some of the adult humor came out of nowhere since the first half of the play was pretty sanitary. It seemed like all of a sudden at the end, Howe pulled out the f-bombs and body part jokes.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super, super fun! The characters were great and the play was pretty relatable and funny. I just wanted more closure at the end. The conflicts were brought up well, and they were able to end well too. It would probably be amazing on stage.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

set in a living room turned dining establishment, the play gives an interesting look at people watching, social issues and post 2nd wave feminism

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find the play all that interesting. It was a short play but a lot more could have happened in that time.

[Carolyn]

One of the funniest plays I have ever read!