Dinner with Friends (TCG Edition)

by Donald Margulies

Overview

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Over the past decade, Donald Margulies has written some of the most insightful works in contemporary American drama. His body of work includes The Loman Family Picnic, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment and Collected Stories, and with each succeeding work his audiences have grown. It is no surprise that his newest work is his most critically successful yet. As with all of Margulies’s work, he is a master of observing what might be considered the ordinary moments of life and its foibles with fresh ears. Dinner with Friends is a funny yet bittersweet examination of the married lives of two couples who have been extremely close for dozens of years. Although it seems to be treading on familiar ground, Dinner keeps changing its perspective to show how one couple’s breakup can have equally devastating effects on another’s stability.

"This is a smart and subtle play that understand there are no easy answers as people evolve and relationships settle into routine."—David Kaufman, Daily News

"Donald Margulies has drawn one of the most complex and convincing portraits of a marriage in recent memory."—Debra Jo Immergut, The Wall Street Journal
"Dinner with Friends is entertainment as succulent as it is sobering."—John Simon, New York Magazine

Donald Margulies lives with his wife and son in New Haven, CT. He is the author of numerous plays, including Collected Stories and Sight Unseen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559367493
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	07/25/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	720,570
File size:	896 KB

About the Author

Donald Margulies's other plays include "Collected Stories", "The Loman Family Picnic", "Sight Unseen" and "Dinner with Friends", for which he was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Table of Contents

	Characters
	Karen and Gabe and Tom and Beth, two couples in their forties
	Place
Act I
Scene 1	The present. A winter evening. Karen and Gabe's kitchen in Connecticut
Scene 2	Later that evening. Tom and Beth's bedroom
Scene 3	Later that evening. Karen and Gabe's living room
Act II
Scene 1	Twelve and a half years earlier. Summer. Gabe and Karen's house in Martha's Vineyard
Scene 2	The present. Five months after the end of Act I. Spring. Karen and Gabe's patio in Connecticut
Scene 3	The same day. A bar in Manhattan
Scene 4	Later that night. Karen and Gabe's bedroom in Martha's Vineyard

Editorial Reviews

A breezy comedy of modern manners that turns poignant and deeply affecting by its end. Margulies touches chords that resonate with a deep affecting humanity.

The San Francisco Examiner

… full of life, warmth, laughs and wisdom …

NY Daily News

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 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.

New York Magazine

… wry and keenly observed and bathed in the unspoken sorrow that can sneak up on you in middle age …

The New York Times

… Margulies writes about relationships with such intelligence and spiky humor that his comedy-drama … becomes something quite wonderful.

Time Magazine

This is a smart and subtle play that understands there are no easy answers as people evolve and relationships settle into routine.
—Daily News

David Kaufman

Donald Margulies has drawn one of the most complex and convincing portraits of a marriage in recent memory.
— The Wall Street Journal

Debra Jo Immergut

Dinner with Friends is entertainment as succulent as it is sobering.
— New York Magazine

John Simon

...wry and keenly observed and bathed in the unspoken sorrow that can sneak up on you in middle age...

NY Times

A breezy comedy of modern manners that turns poignant and deeply affecting by its end. Margulies touches chords that resonate with a deep affecting humanity.

San Francisco Examiner

...Margulies writes about relationships with such intelligence and spiky humor that his comedy-drama...becomes something quite wonderful.

Time