Photo Flash: Square One Theatre Presents THE DINING ROOM by A.R. Gurney

A.R. Gurney's classic play, a finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, takes place in the dining room of a typical well-to-do household. The Dining Room is a remarkable play of days long gone.

Some audience members may not even remember the 'good ol' days' when families sat down around a dining room table, talking, reminiscing and getting caught up on family news and events...no phones, no television, no internet, no distractions...just conversations around one table in each household.

The Dining Room is comprised of a mosaic of interrelated scenes - some funny, some touching, some rueful - but when taken together, the scenes create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Overall, it tells a story of the transition into a much more efficient society with less emphasis on tradition and more emphasis on progress.

According to The New York Times The Dining Room is "funny and rueful and, by the end, very moving." The New York Post describes Gurney's play as "Hilarious and touching...as each comic sketch crazily succeeds another comic sketch a whole pattern of American life emerges." Variety calls it "A thoughtful and superbly written comedy!"

Audiences and critics agree that "if you have the opportunity, go see six actors play over 30 characters. You'll be treated to a range of humanity, an exploration of the traumas, joys and tensions of a wide variety of people taking place in 'a dining room' that manages to symbolize all of them."

The first performance of The Dining Room is scheduled on Thursday, March 5 at 7pm (only) and continues on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Sunday, March 22 (2020). Stratford Academy located at 719 Birdseye Street in Stratford, Connecticut.

Directed by Tom Holehan (Stratford), The Dining Room features Bruce Murray (Stratford), Josie Kulp (North Haven), Ryan Hendrickson (New Haven), Priscilla Squiers (Danbury), Danielle Sultini (Milford) and David Victor (Fairfield).

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