'Friends' packs punch with delicate hand
By Ruby Nancy, QUAD-CITY TIMES -- May 30, 2002

It always helps to start with a first-class script, and New Ground Theatre’s “Dinner With Friends” is a show blessed with superb writing. Sharp dialogue crammed with humor and raw emotion is the centerpiece of this great script — and it definitely deserved its 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The production itself is not too shabby, either. Director Chris Jansen — the artistic director and driving force behind this shiny new professional theater company — has laid a delicate hand on some scenes that pack a big emotional punch, and she lets the many laughs come as they will rather than trying to set them up in an artificial way. She’s assembled a really talented cast, too, and the four performers work together well.

Pat Flaherty and Susan McDonald are Gabe and Karen, successful food editors who are shocked to find their best friends are divorcing. There is the “Dinner” of the title, then the subsequent stresses that come with holding their marriage together as the other couple, Beth and Tom (played by Lora Adams and James Driscoll) head in different directions. An amusing and telling flashback to the weekend Beth and Tom met, cleverly handled here, kicks off the second act in style.

Flaherty is superb as the settled Gabe, and he gives the role an authentic and likeable nice-guy sensibility that is really appealing. His rapport with McDonald is immediately apparent, and their interaction in just the first scene as they describe a recent trip to Italy is enough to make it worth seeing this show — though it’s just the barest beginning of what they accomplish here. Both have plenty of comic and romantic moments, but it is the powerfully dramatic scenes they perform that you will remember.

McDonald’s Karen has flashes of palpable anger and frustration that are beautifully done, as are her lighter moments with Flaherty. She shines in a tense luncheon meeting that finally splinters the friendship between Karen and Beth. Flaherty’s work in a scene where Gabe and Tom meet for a drink is an exercise in what things can be like when a performer has complete mastery of the craft.

Driscoll, as Tom, is also a wonderful performer, and his work in the role is consistent — if somewhat self-centered — throughout the show. The mix of familiarity and distance that he and Adams achieve in some scenes is equal parts easy and uncomfortable. Adams’ Beth comes across first as vulnerable, then reveals a shallow nature that sheds new light on a situation you thought you already understood.

Her performance in the flashback scene is her best, where all the performers play their characters more than a dozen years in the past, and she fairly bounces with a youthful bright-eyed charm that comes across as completely real.

The clothes and changes in hairstyles help set the flashback apart (though one not-quite-right color match is a bit distracting at first), and these are just one of many subtle technical accomplishments that help all the details of this show fall into place.

A spare, flexible set and truly superb lighting — both designed by Gil Koenigsaecker — are the two most obvious of these, and they help provide the polished production values that are to be expected in the work of a professional company.

Funny, thought-provoking, moving, well-written and well done, “Dinner With Friends” is another fine example of why Quad-City area theater is thriving.

If you go 
What: “Dinner With Friends” by New Ground Theatre 
When: 7:30 p.m. today through Saturday, June 1; 2 p.m. Sunday, June 2 
Where: Becherer Hall auditorium, Rivermont Collegiate (formerly St. Katharine’s/St. Mark’s, 1821 Sunset Drive, Bettendorf
How much: $12; $2 discount for students, senior citizens 
Information: (563) 326-PLAY (7529)

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