“The Dining room”: Nostalgia served for dinner
Kylea Riffle
There is always something about the dining room that sticks to the memory over decades.
The wooden table, the chairs, and the silverware that serves delicious dinners set the scene for celebrations and family reunions, the sharing of relatives’ secrets, and the discussion of their misfortunes.
A.R. Gurney’s 1982 play, “The Dining Room,” is set in a single room; and the set stays the same throughout the entire play as 18 scenes, from different households, overlap and intertwine with one another.
The characters, which are played by five men and six women, change around the scenery in the single space, and they as well as the play itself, they cover seven decades of the ‘fading’ upper-middle class WASP family life in New England, starting at around 1900.
Mesa Community College Theatre and Film Arts Department premiered their presentation of “The Dining Room” on Sept. 27, and right away, it promoted a positively different atmosphere.
It was because the play was not on stage; it was in the EXP Theatre due to the renovations that are taking place in the Theatre Outback.
Because of that, and the ‘chandelier-lit’ lighting (which was a nice touch), the dining room was the only setting with, of course, the dining room table set and a few additional props such as: a rug, four other chairs surrounding the table and a tiny dresser that was in the corner.
The audience actually sat in chairs that surrounded the stage.The intimate setting brought more of a personal touch because of how close the audience was to the characters, and it did not feel like the audience was outside looking in.
Before the presentation began, director Kevin Dressler addressed to the audience that the department had to choose either to “not do a first play” or perform this play.
In the pamphlet, Dressler described the reasons for choosing this play were because the show “certainly worked well with the EXP Theatre,” and it posed “significant challenges to the actors.”
In addition, the quick costume changes that had to be successfully executed and the several roles the actors had to play, and also the change of venue, I was pleasantly, and entirely impressed with “The Dining Room.”
The story was pure and to the point; the plot was about the dining room as a culture in itself… a time and place where average, but privileged upper-class citizens, talked-or even fought-with other people without the television blaring in front of them.
All 18 different scenes all had something different to offer the audience, and they expressed varying emotions ranging from happiness in the children at a birthday party, to anger in the man whose family was dishonored, to sadness in the son trying to stop the maid from leaving, and even absolute humor in the handyman and the seductress.
Those were only a few of the characters who briefly made their mark in just one small place, and the actors and actresses build them compellingly.
The physical comedy, gestures, and overlapping dialogue develop a collection of characters who lived their lives both ordinarily an extraordinarily; yet they have little directly in common with each other.
At the end of the show, I could not help but think about the few times I sat at the dinner table with my family, and recalling those few times was emotionally charging.
Times have definitely changed from then to now, and to see a play that definitely brought back those memories was fascinating to see, especially at MCC.
This thoughtfully directed and powerfully acted play was definitely worth seeing.
