Dinner With Friends
At A Contemporary Theatre
By Dan Larsen, for SeattleInsider.com
Originally published by Cox Interactive Media

When a close friend of comfortable couple Gabe and Karen (John Procaccino and Janet Zarish) unexpectedly announces her husband, after years of marriage, is leaving her and their kids for a stewardess, a lifelong blueprint for sharing, joint child raising and friendship is thrown into turmoil. The wife, Beth (Kristin Flanders), is of course the injured party, a self-pronounced guiltless victim of her husband Tom's (Mark Chamberlin) callous escape to a world of rigorous and care-free sex with stewardesses. "You got to them first, didn't you?!" is one of the first things we hear from Tom, angered by what he sees as his estranged wife's attempt to undermine his relationship with their closest friends.

Tom, of course, has a different perspective. Explaining to Gabe that his outward happiness had been a facade for quite some time, he complains of how his marriage to the nagging, "hyper-critical" Beth had sucked the will to live from him and how his new-found love -- "She's a travel agent, not a stewardess!" he quickly points out -- has breathed life back into his body.

It is being in the center of the embittered, feuding couple that causes Gabe, a jovial food writer who can discuss at length the problems of other couples but can't face his own, and Karen, a judgmental, Martha Stewart-esque vision of domestic perfection, to look inwardly at their own seemingly rock-solid relationship. Struggling with the increasingly obvious fact that even the most stable marriages can suddenly and unexpectedly crumble underfoot, they both begin to wrestle with their own individual and joint perspectives of love and marriage.

While the varying dynamics between all the characters are fascinating and revealing of the modern wave of divorces that suddenly seem so easy, it's the dialogue between Gabe and Tom that gets to the crux of most of the play's themes. If marriage gets tough (and it does, for everyone), why not just say "To hell with it!", dispatch responsibility like the anchor that it can be and run away with a stewardess -- "Travel agent!" -- for rigorous and care-free sex? On the other hand, isn't there a lot to be said for the dependable comfort and security of long-term marriage, despite the daily tedium, long talks and requisite effort? As the characters go back and forth on the pros and cons of stability vs. instability, responsibility vs. absolute freedom, anybody in a marriage or long-term relationship will feel several raw nerves being jabbed at by writer Donald Margulies' incisive, probing (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) script.

Acted with biting realism in parts (in particular, during Tom and Beth's bitter fight and Tom and Gabe's dramatic, sad parting of life perspectives) and notable hyper-realism in others, the scenes skip between pushing the audience away to a judgmental distance and sucking it into the center of an argument that can strike awfully close to home in any relationship.

Clearly written by someone of great experience with the effects divorce can have not only on individuals but on those around them, Dinner With Friends is a superb analysis of the modern-day marriage that struggles to find long-term life in a world of increasingly fragmented relationships.

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