DINNER WITH FRIENDS

I had a very fun night out last week-end, having “dinner with friends,” (Fred and Jim,) right before we saw the play…Dinner With Friends. What a brilliant idea! (And it wasn’t even mine.)

So after our perfect Italian repast at a nearby eatery, we segued over to the Zephyr Theatre, (a venue where every seat has an excellent sightline,) on Melrose to see a play that opened with a couple telling a gal pal about their…meal in Italy! Great minds.

In case you never heard of this 1998 play, (which I also did not,) the plot of Dinner With Friends is simple: It consists of two friendly couples, and then one couple breaks up. And it’s basically a comedy with a lot of angst.

Judging by the constant and hearty audience laughter, the presentation is very entertaining. I have to be honest and say that I barely laughed, (I counted five chuckles and eight actual chortles from me,) even though I recognized that the lines are amusing. But since, as the title of this e-zine states, it’s not about me, I have to point-out that the majority of the that the opening night audience was downright guffawing, including Fred and Jim, who told me they really enjoyed the show.

However, that laughter was almost all in the first half. Act II gets serious and a tad tedious, and at least ten minutes should have been cut from it. But it’s actually a semi-famous play, that has been around for over two decades, (and then became a TV movie in 2001,) so the writing is not the fault of this production.

My friends and I agreed that the acting (by the quartet of Marieh Delfino, Jack Esformes, Amy Motta, and Leith Burke,) is good, which is always a bonus, especially in a smaller intimate theatre. And I appreciated that the actors’ ages matched, which is not always the case. So it was very believable that they could be couples and friends, without the audience having to wonder if age differences are part of the story.

But the direction in the second half doesn’t work well; the actors stop at just about every period in the script, which they do not do in Act I. Their lines are actually quick in the funny half, and they keep it all moving. Saying every sentence separately is Mr. X and my pet peeve with actors—no one in real life talks like that. And this foursome does such a good job with the comic lines in Act I, that their work in Act II surprised me, especially in the uber-long final scene.

Now back to the writing, which actually leaves a lot to be desired in Act II. But my friend Jim told me that he liked that the “writing in the second half keeps you slightly off-balance,” and said that he was “captivated” by each of the relationships.

But I feel that the script is incomplete. It has no pay-off. And I don’t get the title. It does open with a dinner scene, and then in the second act, they do chop a vegetable or two, and later on there’s a salad for the ladies, but that’s it. The one couple has dinner with the woman in the first scene, but that would be dinner with friend, not friends. Unless the title means it’s from her point of view, which it does not seem to be.

No matter how picky my literal mind is being right now, Dinner With Friends is still an enjoyable evening of LA theatre for Southern Californians.

And I love that the producers did not change one woman’s name from “Karen.” Not just because it’s also my moniker, but because they didn’t buy into the recent nonsense that uses our name to denote a racist with a blonde bob hair-do! So, good for them.

As far as the set goes, I actually enjoyed watching them put together the complicated scenery for each next section. But as much as I did, my friends and I thought there was a much easier way to portray all the locations, which would help shorten the over-two-hour length.

I do have a couple of suggestions for them. During part of Act II, in a scene in which just the women are chatting with each other, there are background nature noises to indicate that they’re sitting outside in what I’m guessing is the summer. But the noises need to be lower or the women need to talk louder because they were being drowned-out most of the time.

Also, I’ve never had a problem with a theatre program before, but this one omits the time and settings, which would be very helpful to know. A man from the theatre who gave a welcome speech at the start told us that the second half is twelve years prior to the first, but, as my friends told me, if we had missed that one sentence from him, we would have been totally lost. There are three more scenes after that flashback, and they take place sometime after that first act, but it takes awhile to realize that the setting has now jumped forward. It looks to be at least six months later, but who knows.  It was all so confusing to our own trio.

But now that I told you about it, you’re mentally prepared for it all. So, if you want to see a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramedy, in a still-hip area of LA, (that you should definitely explore before or after the show,) I say go for this one. (But fair warning—if you’re in a troubled, or even a potentially troubled, marriage, this may not be the show for you. Or is it? It may make you feel not so alone!)

My main suggestion, though, is that you do not go hungry because the cast eats and drinks and talks about and prepares food throughout! I have to go eat my leftovers now, just thinking about it.

Dinner With Friends running through April 28, 2024
Zephyr Theatre
7456 Melrose Ave.
323-965-9996 www.OnStage411.com/Friends