Dinner With Friends Opens at Elmwood Playhouse in Nyack

BY GEORGE J. DACRE

With a cast of four Dinner With Friends is the story of two couples who are best friends but one couples marriage breakup causes their friendship to become strained. Steve Taylor, as Gabe, and Claudia Stefany, as his wife Karen, get the news from Beth (Mary Ashley) who says her husband Tom (Andrew Greenway) has left her. This makes for an interesting time at Karen and Gabe’s Connecticut home in the year 2000 when Beth breaks down and Karen and Gabe try to console her and it puts a strain on their relationship.

Later, at home, Beth tells Tom, who somehow is still there, that she has broken the news of their breakup to their best friends and this drives Tom batty and they argue but wind up making love. Later still, Karen and Gabe go over the situation at their home and they cannot quite fathom it all. The dialogue is interesting.

After a 15-minute intermission in Act Two, the scene is Martha’s Vineyard in a summer twelve and one half years earlier with Karen and Gabe much younger and very much in love. This is followed by an update in time with Karen and Gabe in their Connecticut home a few months after Beth has broken her bad news to them. Several dramas unfold, which we will not reveal.

During all these scenes the problems of marriage and relationships is discussed in just about every aspect you could think of but when all is said and done it seems that Karen and Gabe are okay and so are Tom and Beth with their new loves and lives.

Dinner with Friends holds the audience interest, there are some laughs and the four member cast makes the most of the plot. I rate Dinner With Friends Two Stars Out Of Four!

  elmwood playhouse, Martha’s Vineyard, Nyack