Pioneer Productions’ revival of David Margulies’ Pultizer-winning Dinner With Friends, at the Morristown United Methodist Church for one more weekend, should come with a disclaimer on the tickets:
WARNING! THIS PLAY MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR RELATIONSHIP!
Dinner With Friends explores how couples navigate friendships, and re-appraise their own unions, when married besties de-couple.
The play tracks two couples, best friends entering middle age. Outwardly, they appear blissful in their respective lives. Inwardly, they struggle to keep the spousal embers glowing while juggling parenthood, careers and a creeping recognition of mortality.
This story will reverberate with anyone who has agonized over should I stay or should I go? or has tried to recalibrate relationships with friends in splintered romances.
Doug McLaughlin directs a superb cast that proves community theater, at its best, is very good indeed.
Pioneer veterans Miriam Salerno and Jon Beeler (both, Lost in Yonkers and God of Carnage) play Beth and Tom. She’s a high-strung artist. He’s a lawyer who travels too much. They have been married a dozen years.
They were introduced by Gabe (Seth Kaplan), Tom’s best pal from college, and Karen (Carla Talty), Beth’s closest friend from an office job, at Gabe and Karen’s vacation place on Martha’s Vineyard.
The couples share many good times as the years roll on. Small talk flows easily. Their kids play together. Everyone appears happy. Until they’re not. Gabe, a jovial food critic, and Karen, a control freak, are stunned when Tom and Beth hit the rocks.
The time-traveling narrative makes before-and-after stops at the Vineyard, Gabe and Karen’s Connecticut kitchen, and Tom and Beth’s bedroom, with a pivotal detour to a bar. Inter- and intra-couple relations become intense, even explosive.
A few laughs are mixed into the twists and turns, and some surprises, as everyone sorts things out.
At first, Tom looks like the villain. But is he? Is anybody to blame? How well do we really know our significant others and our bosom buddies–and vice versa?
Those are the hard questions served at Dinner With Friends. The answers may be as thorny for couples in the audience as for the ones onstage.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Dinner With Friends concludes its run this coming weekend, on Nov. 22 and 23, 2024, at 8 pm, and on Nov. 24 at 3 pm. Tickets: $25. The Morristown United Methodist Church is at 50 South Park Place.
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