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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dining Room; not just about food, it could be about you,
By Spencer Griffin (West Des Moines, Iowa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dining Room. (Paperback)
Dining rooms are generally seen as the meeting place of a family. The place where a family can sit down and really talk about how each other's busy lives are going. The place where people that are close can come together and share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. But the dining room in the play with the same name is a different kind of dining room. This dining room is, in fact, not just one dining room but many of them. The setting in this play is one of different dining rooms in different homes with different people and different situations. It allows the audience to take a small peek into the lives of many individuals that, at one level or another, they can relate to. I have really never read anything like this play before. One of the many interesting aspects about this play is that there are about 60 parts but it is suggested to only use six actors. These six actors would rotate roles and, instead of using different costumes, would change their mannerisms and speech for each character. What an intriguing idea to use for a play. It makes the play almost like a comedy show with different sketches but a constant setting. As a playwright myself, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this play. It gave me a new sense of playwriting. I looked at Gurney's wonderful use of characterization and how he was able to portray all kinds of different people without the use of costuming. That is something that is very difficult to do. For example, in one scene he has an architect and a buyer look at the dining room. Buyer: This room has such resonance. Architect: So does a church but that doesn't mean we have to live in it. And then in a scene later in the play he has two prep-school girls getting ready for a small party. Sarah: Here. Gin and vodka and Fresca. The boys are bringing the pot. Wonderfully written characters add such a dimension to any piece of writing but especially in playwriting. In a play one cannot have the setting change too much because of how difficult it is to technically. The wonderful thing about Gurney is that he used that to his advantage. He took the guidelines that one must look at to write with and made the system work to his benefit. Revolving the play around the dining room is an excellent spawning pool of rich stories and characters. Another thing that I liked about this play was that it had a constant theme. The theme was the portrayal of what Gurney believes to be the dying culture, the upper middle class. He used the dining room as a metaphor for our entire culture. Because it is dramatic writing, Gurney was not able to use much description in the story but he does truly have a feel for the "show, don't tell" concept. The only downside to the play was that it didn't have a main plot point. Although in some ways this makes it an intriguing play it also hinders the audience's ability to get incredibly emotionally involved in the story. It just shows snippets of people's lives and doesn't give the audience too much time to actually care for the characters. This is a problem because if the audience doesn't care what happens, then they aren't going to listen. Overall, this play was a very new and interesting approach to plays and playwriting. I would suggest it to anyone looking for a play that takes the standard tactics of playwriting and turns them on their sides.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Dining Room---Welcoming and Tasteful,
By "wheels265" (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dining Room. (Paperback)
A.R. Gurney's "The Dining Room" is a play that explores the distresses in upper middle-class life and pokes fun at their realative insignificance. As a critic who's previously performed this play, this author feels that the brief intervals of drama strike with force at an observer's emotions, placated by the occasional burst of sheer and timeless comedy. The unconventional style in which Gurney delivers his message is created through a series of unrelated scenes that intertwine on stage, while keeping a rigid wall between their two existences. As one scene comes to a close, the other begins within the same dining room. This is done without any dialogue exchange or even mention of the others' presence between characters of the old and new scenes. Gurney amuses the audience through light bashing of the rich by having his characters distress over seemingly insignificant problems that range from the pettiest of insults to the improper arrangement of silverware. However, Gurney does remind us that serious misfortunes are encountered by people of all classes. The inevitable death of a beloved father to the gutwrenching mental downfall of an elderly grandmother who is afflicted with the terrible disease of Alzheimer's both highlight this fact of life. Gurney's play is refreshing and inspiring, entertaining and thought provoking. I recomend this play to anyone in the mood for a change from the norm.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
WASP Longings,
By Sonya Tea "Sonya94110" (Columbia, SC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dining Room. (Paperback)
A love poem to the idea of WASP Culture. A terrible play, in my opinion, threaded through with longing and romance for a white hetero-male protestant centered world. The underlying values happen to not fit mine, and I found it to be distasteful. Anti-semitic, anti-feminist, racist longings and memories. I understand others may enjoy it, but I found working with this text to put my teeth on edge.
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