The Dining Room
“I know a lot….I eat dinner, and I listen.”
Gathering for meals around the communal table, lives are played out with warmth
and heartbreak. In a mosaic of interrelated scenes, the Dining Room touches
universal emotions and experiences, with love and humor.
By A.R. Gurney
For Old Town Playhouse Director – Thomas Webb
Performances: November 8 – 23, 2013
Cast:
Jan Dalton
Barb Goodearl
Michael Kania
Rick Korndorfer
Margaret Anne Slawson
Mollie Thompson
Jamaica Weston
Pulitzer nominated, The Dining Room presents a mosaic of 18 wonderful life stories – humorous, heartwarming, bittersweet, painful, rueful and touching. All are moving. All will bring back memories – some a smile, some a tear.
The stories take place in a dining room 1935 to 1980, presented the way our mind works – not sequentially but in a hodgepodge of overlapping memories – about family struggles, parental control, fear, strength, love, hurt and affection.
Seven actors portray 57 characters in these 18 stories. With minimal set, costume and props the actors depict a wide range of ages, personalities and emotions. Each story introduces a new set of characters and events – a father lectures his young son on politics; a brother and sister fight over who gets the table; a boy returns home unexpectedly from boarding school; a daughter pleads furtively to return home; a father tells his family he must defend his brother’s honor.
But Gurney takes us deeper in this multi-layered play where the dining room is a metaphor for change. Beneath the wondrous stories, Gurney presents the decline of the patriarchal society with its dysfunctional characteristics and the rise of new cultural foundations. He tells us that the old ways are dying but were not all bad and the new stronger and more inclusive culture is not all good.
Dovetailing swiftly and smoothly, the varied scenes coalesce, ultimately into a theatrical experience of exceptional range, compassionate humor and abundant
humanity.