Things Fall Apart

In Dinner With Friends, two married couples form a fragile social molecule that threatens to disintegrate in a chain reaction of divorce. The play begins with one of the wives, Beth, confiding over dinner to her married friends, Gabe and Karen, that she’s splitting with her husband, Tom. When Tom...

By Penn Bullock

February 24, 2011

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In Dinner With Friends, two married couples form a fragile social molecule that threatens to disintegrate in a chain reaction of divorce. The play begins with one of the wives, Beth, confiding over dinner to her married friends, Gabe and Karen, that she’s splitting with her husband, Tom. When Tom learns that Beth has been talking shit behind his back, he demands an audience with Gabe and Karen to air his own grievances. What ensues is a kind of contamination that will be familiar to couples in the real world: One couple’s acrimony infects the other, and Gabe and Karen find themselves doubting their own union. And then there’s the fact that the two fixed up Tom and Beth in the first place. Dinner with Friends vivisects these two marriages with a fine scalpel. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2000, and opens at Palm Beach Dramaworks (322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach) on Friday at 8 p.m. Catch it before it ends April 17. Tickets cost $47, or $10 for students. Call 561-514-4042, or visit palmbeachdramaworks.org.
Wednesdays-Sundays. Starts: Feb. 25. Continues through April 17, 2011

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