thanks to the fine eye of Dennis Kwan.

Thanks, boss!!

By ERIC MARCHESE

2010-06-07 12:03:10

No one ever said marriage was easy, and in “Dinner With Friends,” Donald Margulies gives us an accurate, close-up view of two couples – and, by extension, all marriages – without ever stooping to clichés or contrivances.

Instead, he reveals the story’s plotlines through each character’s traits and beliefs. The resulting marital fireworks are as trenchant now as nearly 20 years ago, when the 1991 play captured the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Brian Kite’s staging for La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment is well-cast, its quartet of actors breathing life into their characters, scenes and dialogue. Like all good actors, the adjustments each of their characters makes are subtle and finely gradated, giving this “Dinner” heft and authenticity.

The story’s two couples are the happily married Gabe and Karen (Kevin Weisman, Melanie Lora) and their best friends, Tom (Patrick Fabian) and Beth (Cate Cohen), whose marriage is coming apart at the seams.

Hearing Beth’s side first, our natural reaction is to side with her, the aggrieved wife. But Gabe isn’t so sure Tom’s version of the truth should be glossed over – and neither is Margulies.

By the time we’ve heard both sides, we’re in the same gray areas as Tom, Beth and Gabe. Only Karen is dead-certain that Tom is pond scum undeserving of any friendship or emotional support.

Adding resonance to the play’s overarching themes is the revelation, told in flashback, that Beth and Tom are only together because 12 years earlier, at the start of their own marriage, Karen and Gabe invited their still-single best friends to their summer home in Cape Cod.

Despite Beth’s later assertion that Karen “thought Tom never should have married me,” the flashback tells us Karen optimistically sees Tom as “a good guy waiting to happen.” More importantly, it shows us four personalities in transition from open-minded college students to the more calcified present-day versions of themselves.

Margulies is so well-wired into the complexities of human feelings that while he keeps us busy watching Beth and Tom battle it out, the focus of “Dinner” becomes Karen and Gabe, and the way their friends’ disintegrating marriage rocks their complacent world.

Each member of Kite’s quartet allows the script’s often passionately emotional scenes to appear to unfold spontaneously. By not overstating Margulies’ perfectly attuned dialogue, the cast makes it that much more realistic.

Margulies’ brilliance shines in incisive dialogue and one-liners such as “You never know what couples are like when they’re alone.” More remarkable is how the case Tom makes for leaving Beth is as compelling as Beth’s side of things. Despite the flaws in each character, Margulies feels compassion for all four, and wants us to do the same.

Weisman’s Gabe is a far cry from the actor’s quirky, eccentric Marshall on television’s “Alias” – a decent, kind-hearted soul quick to forgive, nurturing of his wife, kids and friends. Weisman shows Gabe’s touching naiveté, his love of the stability and order of marriage, and his agonized confusion over having to take sides.

Lora highlights Karen’s controlling, judgmental nature and her relentless perfectionism whether in her cooking or in her husband, kids and friends. As long as Gabe remains submissive, Karen’s compulsion can’t harm their marriage, but as “Dinner” winds down, we see the doubts Karen has begun to harbor about Gabe.

The dark, sultry Cohen downplays Beth’s emotional turmoil, making the character’s vitriol an ordinary trait in her makeup along with caution and diffidence. She also shows how much Beth, in private, despises Karen’s patronizing ways.

Tom is brash, alert and borderline shallow. Fabian, more importantly, shows how ingratiating Tom can be, turning on the charm whenever needed (as in his first time meeting Beth). He may typify “Peter Pan syndrome,” but as he tells his friends, he simply wants a partner who’s warm and affectionate, which Beth clearly is not.

John Iacovelli’s modular set design uses the stages turntable cannily, with each of Act One’s three settings occupying one-third of the circle. Those sets are struck during intermission, when stagehands quickly construct the settings for the second act.

Scripts this outstanding are few and far between. So are superb stagings like this one, which will have audiences nodding in recognition of the emotions on display in every scene.

‘Dinner With Friends’

When: Through June 20. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Where: La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada.

How much: $35-$50

Length: About two hours

Suitability: Adults and teens (for language and content)

Call: 562-944-9801

Online: www.lamiradatheatre.com

Contact the writer: emarchesewriter@gmail.com
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excellent.