Dinner with Friends - Acting Edition

by Donald Margulies

• ISBN13: 9780822217541
• ISBN10: 0822217546
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-03
• Publisher: DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE INC

Summary

THE STORY: As described by New York Magazine: Two married couples have been best friends for years. In their Connecticut home, Karen and Gabe, international food writers, are giving a dinner for Beth and Tom, which he doesn't attend. It emerges from the heartbroken Beth that he has left her for another woman. Gabe and Karen are almost as crushed, having expected 'to grow old and fat together, the four of us.' When Tom shows up at his home in the next scene, late at night, he is enraged that Beth broke the news of their breakup in his absence. Late as it is, he rushes over to his friends in the next scene to present his side of the story. Act Two begins with another dinner, twelve and a half years earlier, in a summer house on Martha's Vineyard, where Karen and Gabe are introducing Beth to Tom. Then we skip five months after the events in Act One, as Beth reveals to Karen...that she has fallen in love with an old friend whom she intends to marry...Later that day, in a Manhattan bar, Tom, a lawyer, tells Gabe about his [newfound] happiness, to which Gabe reacts sourly. Still later that night, Gabe and Karen are going to bed in the Vineyard house, and discuss the Tom-and-Beth situation, as well as their own [marriage]...clinging to it like the shipwrecked to their raft...From this already you can gather that there is skillful construction here, as well as keen psychological insight...Donald Margulies is establishing himself as one of our leading playwrights.