BWW Reviews: Farmington Valley Stage Co's DINNER WITH FRIENDS Dishes out Marital Distress

Dinner with Friends
by Donald Margulies
Directed by Howard Hirsch
for Farmington Valley Stage Company, Canton Town Hall, 4 Market Street, Collinsville through June 22
www.fvstage.org

My second helping of Donald Margulies' Dinner with Friends (having reviewed it last year at Repertory Theatre of New Britain) reminded me of why this seemingly simple play got under my skin after one viewing. Exploring the terrain of damaged marriages on stage, television and film would seem to be an exercise in tilling some over-harvested fields. What could one possibly say about the state of marriage in modern society that hasn't been said time and again?

Connecticut resident Margulies' deceptive and engrossing Pulitzer Prize-winner of a play is receiving a sturdy, if Spartan, production in quaint Collinsville by the Farmington Valley Stage Company. The fact that the drama stands up as a no-frills offering is a testament to the writing, the acting, and, to a point, the direction by Nutmeg State community theatre legend, Howard Hirsch.

It turns out the bucolic and picture-perfect setting of Collinsville, with its cute restaurants and shops, is an ideal location to experience Dinner with Friends. The situations in the piece seem typical and typically American - conversations over dinner, cocktails and in the bedroom. When you leave the theatre, you are assured that this New England town undoubtedly masks the private fissures and fractures that we hide from our closest friends.

In the play, Gabe and Karen are hosting a post-vacation download dinner for their friend Beth. Travel trivialities and recipe chatter dominate the lopsided conversation until Beth crumbles and announces her impending divorce from Tom. Seemingly out of nowhere, Tom and Beth's split send Gabe and Karen's carefully-constructed sense of marriage into a tailspin. What follows is a landslide of blame, recriminations, remembrance, and self-doubt.

The women in the cast tear into the material with gusto. Whereas the material would easily lend itself to a maudlin, navel-gazing assessment of marriage, Terri d'Arcangelo (Beth) and Jennifer Ouellette (Karen) are fearless in exploring the facades women can put up (and put up with) in order to get and stay "happily" married. Is Beth as nutty and manipulative as Tom portrays her to be? Is Karen so obsessed with the image of perfection that she fails to see the cracks in her own relationship's foundations? D'Arcangelo and Ouellette are particularly strong in the scene where they finally go at each other, saying what they are really thinking to each other while folding their arms in front of themselves, as if to ward off unpleasant truths.

Mark Engelhart delivers a strong and sympathetic portrait of Tom. In some ways, this is the trickiest part in the play as we have no reason to like him by the time he shows up on the stage after the lengthy first scene. Engelhart works hard, without showing the work, to get the audience past its inherent distaste for a philanderer. He builds sympathies for the one character who has been the most fearless in his pursuit of happiness, something that he finds only outside of marriage.

Where Tom is a tricky part, the role of Gabe is probably the toughest part in the quartet to master. Gabe has bought the textbook definitions of marriage hook, line and sinker. In so doing, he has to dig deep into his own denials in order to stay invested in his own marriage. Mike Zizka, one of the busiest actors on the community theatre scene, approaches the material in a Woody Allen-esque fashion, relying heavily on acting technique. The play, however, requires a more realistic approach than the hermetically sealed characters of Allen's universe. Zizka's Gabe is well-spoken and intelligent, but needs to nudge himself into a more emotional style and less self-aware type of acting. I think Zizka can and will get to that point as the run continues.

Howard Hirsch's direction has the play gallop through the first scene. The rushed, almost Mamet-at-a-dinner-party, pacing does not suit Margulies' desire to show the relaxed, short-hand that exists between couples and friends over wine and food. Fortunately, Hirsch and the cast seem on on firmer footing in the subsequent scenes. The final scene between Gabe and Karen plays a little too pat and should end on a much more uncertain note, with Hirsch having the actors collapse into a kiss where the actual stage directions for the play indicate a much more tenuous, ambiguous and fearful ending.

Although a piece about the at-times insufferable claustrophobia of marriage, Farmington Valley Stage Company's setting is too reductive. Extremely minimal scenic elements leave the actors huddling around a too-small kitchen island or a twin bed. To be sure, community theatre exists on a budget, but with no set to speak of, right-sizing the furnishings would allow the piece to breathe a bit more while still getting us to hold our breath.

Photo of Mark Engelhart and Mike Zizka by Howard Hahn.

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