Silver Spring Stage presents the Pulitzer Prize
winning Dinner with Friends, by Donald Margulies,
a play on the nature of marriage and friendship explored with clever
wit and poignant drama, directed by Craig Allen Mummey. Dinner
with Friends will run weekends September 26 to October
19.
Silver Spring Stage is located in the Woodmoor
Shopping Center, lower level (next to the CVS) at Colesville Road
and University Boulevard. Ticket prices range from $13 to $18. Performances
are Friday and Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday matinees on October
5 and October 19 at 2:00 PM. Tickets can be purchased at www.ssstage.org.
Information is also available by calling (301) 593-6036.
Dinner with Friends opens as
an apparently simple story of one couple’s breakup and its
effect on their closest friends, but it grows into a perceptive
and surprising exploration of the nature of marriage and friendship
itself. The play began as a commissioned work for the Actors Theatre
of Louisville in 1998 and landed Off Broadway in 1999. In 2000,
it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with the Lucille Lortel
Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, the Outer Critics Circle
Award, among others. HBO presented a film version in 2001. Donald
Margulies, the Brooklyn born playwright who teaches writing at Yale
University, wrote that Dinner with Friends like
all his plays “reflect observations I'm having at that time
in my life ... All around us, relationships are changing, marriages
are breaking up. It's those notions of impermanence, the yearning
for something else that I'm tapping into.” Margulies exposes
the vulnerability adults experience as they and their relationships
mature, the difficult choices they make or resist making, one’s
sense of self within a relationship, and the trust and truths in
friendships and marriage. Food plays a prominent role (or stand-in
for relationships) in the play because of one couple’s profession,
how food brings people together, the sensory memories it evokes
and its inherent temporal nature. Dinner with Friends
mixes all these ingredients into a delicious morsel of theatre that
will delight your palate.
Gabe (Doug Krehbiel) and Karen (Leta Hall), a happily
married couple who are international food writers, have been friends
with Tom (Andrew S. Greenleaf) and Beth (Andrea Spitz Greenleaf),
another married couple, for many years. In fact, it was Gabe and
Karen who fixed up their friends in the first place. While having
dinner at Gabe and Karen's home one night, Beth tearfully reveals
that she is getting a divorce from Tom, who has been unfaithful.
Tom, who had been away on business, finds out that Beth has told
their friends about the looming divorce, and hastens to Gabe and
Karen's home. Tom and Beth had planned to tell their friends about
their breakup together, but Tom now believes that Beth has unfairly
presented herself as the wronged party, and feels he must present
his own side of the story. The play offers more revelations about
the couples at different ages and stages of their lives, and the
effects of Tom and Beth's breakup on Gabe and Karen, who first feel
compelled to choose sides, and then begin to question the strength
of their own seemingly tranquil marriage. Throughout, Margulies
enchants audiences with his hilarious insights and powerful questions
on the state of relationships that will intrigue and engage audiences.
The production team includes Jason Matthew Farrell
(Assistant Director/Stage Manager), David Steigerwald (Sound Design),
Andrew S. Greenleaf (Set Design), Don & Jessie Slater (Light
Design), and Mary Dalto (Props/Set Dressing Design).
The Stage's 2008-2009 “Find Yourself”
season continues with Wendy Wasserstein’s last play Third
(Nov. 7-30), holiday show A Little Princess ( Dec. 12-21),
Shaw’s satire Arms and the Man (Jan. 9-Feb. 1), drama
of 1950’s McCarthy era A Bad Friend (Feb. 20-Mar.
15), provocative expose on the 10th anniversary of the school massacre
columbinus (Apr. 3-26), comic romp As Bees in Honey
Drown (May 15-Jun. 7), and classic Agatha Christie suspense
The Mousetrap (Jun. 26-July 26).
Silver Spring Stage is grateful for support from
the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County and the Maryland
State Arts Council.
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Sept. 26 - Oct. 19, 2008