The Dining Room

A.R. Gurney ventures into the symbolic core of the WASP’s nest in The Dining Room, a wistful meditation on the decline of genteelness in 20th-century America. The set—a formal, burnished wooden table and chairs, plus a carpet and a cabinet—remains the same throughout, but the people inhabiting it are in a constant state of flux. They are visitors from different decades, classes and states of mind, and none of them sticks around very long; as Gurney moves from vignette to vignette, his characters (cranky industrialists, loyal servants, doddering relatives, eager children, adulterous lovers, scheming architects and many more) bob on- and offstage, as though carried by the current of a softly babbling brook.

Each scene has its own story, etched with wry economy, but these microplots are secondary to their collective effect, which is to represent the dwindling import of dining rooms and what they represent. (“The thought of sitting down with a number of intelligent, attractive people to enjoy good food well cooked and properly served…that apparently doesn’t occur to people any more,” as someone notes.) Ably directed by Jonathan Silverstein, Keen Company’s polymorphic cast of six—including the amusingly starchy Ann McDonough, a veteran of the play’s original 1982 production—pitches the rue with finesse. The Dining Room’s graceful flow and quick wit help ease the play’s strange central irony: that this chagrined eulogy for the culture of sit-down meals is structured and served buffet-style.