Dinner with Friends [Paperback]

Donald Margulies (Author), Donald Margulies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

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.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

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.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 76 pages
• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822217546
• ISBN-13: 978-0822217541
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Theater > General
  • #88 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > United States

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real people, real issues, and hard questions., July 7, 2001

By 

A. C. Walter "awalter" (Lynnwood, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dinner with Friends (Paperback)

Donald Margulies' "Dinner with Friends" received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, a well-deserved award. The play deals with two couples who have been close for a long time, but now one couple is going through a divorce. Throughout the play, relationships are questioned and reorganized. The still-married couple find themselves assessing the strength of their own relationship and mourning the little corner of their world which dies when their friends divorce.

"Dinner with Friends" is a rare gem--a questing, moral play that takes an honest look at the issues of commitment and fidelity in today's world. I don't think I've seen a new play which delved so deep and true into the heart of an everyday issue, and with everyday characters, since David Mamet's "Oleanna." The last two scenes bare the relationships and souls of the characters so fully (and, thankfully, without overt hysterics) that I literally got the chills.

In scene three of the second act Gabe meets his friend Tom a few months after Tom and his wife have split. Tom is living with his travel agent girlfriend, and Gabe quickly tires of Tom's rationalizations and his descriptions of the fantasy life he has constructed around himself. Tom talks fanatically about his newfound freedom, and Gabe tells him he's starting to sound "like a Moonie." Gabe finally voices the essential problem he has with Tom's decision to leave his family. Gabe says, "The key to civilization, I think, is fighting the impulse to chuck it all." Then Tom tries to tell Gabe that maybe Gabe's own marriage isn't all that it appears to be; Tom has heard Gabe complain in the past, and Tom says that he knows the signs of trouble. The difference between the two men, however, is that Gabe believes in working at his marriage and cannot imagine ever giving up. "You don't get it," Gabe says. "I _cling_ to Karen; I _cling_ to her. Imagining a life without her doesn't excite me, it just makes me anxious."

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Affecting. Modernistic. Real. Sad. Annoying., November 29, 2000

By 

Christian Engler (Woburn, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dinner with Friends (Paperback)

The euphoric and blissful bubble that a functioning relationship can father is a wonderful thing. When two individuals are linked by common interests, shared ideals and beliefs, nothing in respects to a career, money or fame can come close to it; it is a wonderful, natural high to experience true love. However, what happens when a marriage does not work and the foundation that eventually led to that marriage was an erroneous one? In Dinner With Friends, playwright David Margulies explores just such a situation.

We have two couples, Beth and Tom and Karen and Gabe, all somewhere in their forties and all the best of friends; the former couple, Tom in particular, has grown rather weary about his workaday existence as a lawyer. His energy for life has waned dramatically, and who does he pour his blame on? His artist wife Beth. She in turn blames him for not being open enough. Thus, the blame game starts to take root. The latter couple, Karen and Gabe, get woven into this battle due to their friendship, a friendship that slowly begins to crack when they try to comprehend the depth of their friend's unhappiness, i.e. the banal conversations, the duty of paying off a mortgage, the raising of kids, etc. It is essentially the story of four baby-boomers who do not like the turn their lives are taking. One couple breaks up, and in the process of doing so, they almost develope a 'plastic' or 'artificial' Ken and Barbie personality, that because I'm divorced now I jog more and have better sex. An arrogant happiness developes. That artificiality affects Karen and Gabe deeply, because they debate if their friendship was one of a genuine nature. The good times of the past are no more, so what is there to look forward to?

Karen and Gabe are scared at the transition that their 'old' friends took, for if it happened to Tom and Beth, it could happen to anyone. And therein is where the power of this play lies: that divorce can happen to anyone.

In its own right the play is smartly written: vibrant, sharp, stinging, fast-paced and edgy. A smart, wry drama about an unpleasant and common issue.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight Well Seen, August 6, 2000

By 

"dramaturgency" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dinner with Friends (Paperback)

Last season's foursome relationship play, Closer, by Patrick Marber, has many deserving admirers, but I'm partial to Dinner with Friends, and not just for the Pulitzer award, or because it's an American play, not British. What Margulies does so deftly is create individuals, couples, and friendships, all of which are distinct entities ... in a play that shows great insight into my generation's struggle with intimacy. Reading or watching the play I find myself hating the divorcing couple, yet unable to dismiss them. They are fully credible characters, acting out of clearly realized inner needs. I would recomment Donald Margulies' play to anyone who appreciates subtle realsim, peppered with subtle insight and humor.