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REVIEW: "Dinner with Friends"
Published: 4/27/2012 1:23 PM
Last Modified: 4/27/2012 7:04 PM

Few things can be more satisfying than the intelligent, nuanced performance of a well-made play.

That is what Theatre Pops is offering, with its production of “Dinner with Friends,” which opened Thursday at the Tulsa PAC. It only runs through Sunday, so it be wise to get tickets now.

Donald Margulies’ play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, is on the surface a portrait of two couples and their friendship, and how the dissolution of one side of this quadrangle ultimately ruptures the bonds that have linked these four people together for years.

It’s territory that dramatists have explored for decades, yet what makes Margulies’ play distinctive is how his four characters are at once painfully real and human, recognizable in ways that can make one laugh one moment and squirm uncomfortably the next — yet also can be seen as archetypes of emotion and behavior.

Then there’s the whole idea of food that wafts through the action of the play. It goes beyond the fact that Gabe (Jarrod Kopp) is a food writer, and he and Karen (Kristin Harding) are at their most comfortable when things to eat are the topic of discussion.

Food is a source of sustenance, food brings people together, food is something shared, food is at its best when it is treated with the proper care and respect — all physical things that can apply, in an emotional context, to love.

Yet food, if it is to be of value to an individual, must be consumed — in other words, destroyed.

Something like that happens when Beth (Heather Sams) announces one night after dinner with Gabe and Karen that the reason her husband, Tom (Freddie Tate), is absent is because he’s found another woman and wants a divorce.

When Tom arrives later, to give his side of the story, the fractures have already begun. Neither Gabe nor Karen can quite comprehend Tom’s intense dissatisfaction with his marriage, that life with Beth had been a decade or so of misery.

As time goes on, Tom and Beth begin making new — and obviously much more satisfying — lives with other people. Yet these changes are not welcomed by the people they consider their “best friends.”

It’s a play that lives or dies on how naturally Margulies’ dialogue flows among the four characters, and directors Kelli McLoud-Schingen and Valerie Stefan have honed their casts’ performances to an impressive edge.

And while each character may represent a certain idea about marriage or friendship, the four actors never allow their characters to become clanging symbols.

Instead, they keep unveiling new nuances of their characters in subtle, understated ways — the fear that underlies Gabe’s genial passivity; the brittle intolerance that Karen’s tries to mask with vivacity and control; Tom’s inchoate joy at taking risks and icy disappointment at those who can’t share in that joy; the slowly revealed machinations of Beth.

It all helps make the action of “Dinner with Friends” sharp and convincing, and its impact on audiences striking.

“Dinner with Friends” continues with performances at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St. Tickets are $10-$15; 918-596-7111, tulsaworld.com/mytix.


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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