Review: A FINE 'DINING ROOM' AT GRANITE THEATRE
Granite mounts an ambitious, well-appointed Gurney
he set immediately grabs you when you walk into the theatre: An intricately crafted dining room, set on a stage with a pronounced tilt, in front of which sits one of those little museum gallery cards in a frame: "Dining Room. American. 20th Century." It is immediately clear that director and set designer Russ Ekstrom has a vision for the show, and he has worked capably with this local cast to bring it to life.
Written in 1981, in the waning days of a certain strain of American upper-middle-class self-regard, A.R. Gurney's "The Dining Room" was already looking backward, charting the slow erosion of a domestic ideal that had begun to slip away. Seen now, in an era that has revived and repackaged many of those same values, the play lands as both period piece and something more unsettlingly current — less elegy than premonition.
The Granite Theatre's production leans into the play's central conceit: this is not a collection of discrete vignettes but a single room bearing witness to a century of American private life. And the production's most eloquent argument for that idea is Ekstrom's phenomenal set. The dining room is immaculate, fully lived-in, and meticulously detailed — the massive, elegant table listing precipitously, something the actors studiously ignore. Sconces. Original paintings. Chair rail. Antique radio-button light switches. Here is continuity made visible: objects that outlast the people who use them.
Gurney's script asks a great deal of its performers. A small ensemble — eight actors — must conjure dozens of characters across generations, often with little more than a shift in posture or tone to mark the transition. The beauty of the episodic structure is that each actor gets an opportunity to shine. There are so many nice moments: Rachel Anhalt has a subtle turn as a beleaguered nanny. Elias Beck does a clever turn as a psychiatrist. Vickie Blake has a heartbreaking moment as an aging mom. Mark Diekmann has a marvelous dark comedic moment as a man whose brother has been insulted "at the club." Kyle Ferreira offers appropriately baffled side-eye as a teen who comes home from military school early to find "uncle Gordon" and his mom having coffee. Jerry Larkin as the patriarch enduring yet another visit from a grandchild whose goal is a loan. A deliciously mordant delivery of "Which one are you?" Kelly Rae LeGault has a wonderful final monologue as a hostess. In a charming scene, Katherine Scalaro climbs under the massive table with a handyman figuring out repairs (while telling him about her "ex-husband.")
Ekstrom handles the episodic structure with crisp efficiency. Often, actors for the next scene will have already entered before the previous one is finished. It works smoothly and keeps the pacing tight.
What emerges most clearly is the tension between preservation and change. The production's visual world holds fast to the dining room as a site of order and continuity, even as the scenes that pass through it trace a gradual loosening of those structures. The rituals persist, but their meanings shift; the room remains, but the world that sustained it grows less certain.
This is a commendably ambitious staging of a deceptively challenging play. If the full sweep of Gurney's hundred years of American private life proves elusive or dated in places, Ekstrom's production captures enough of its texture — and enough of its questions — to make for an engaging evening of theatre. If you're drawn to the kind of show that uses domestic surfaces to excavate deeper structures, you'll find a good deal to appreciate here.
The Dining Room, by A. R. Gurney, directed by Russ Ekstrom. The Granite Theatre, 1 Granite St. Westerly, through May 10. Tickets $30-$35, available at www.GraniteTheatre.org
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