The Death of WASPdom
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

If the walls of the eponymous room in “The Dining Room” could talk, they would start at a discreet whisper. After looking to make sure the servants and neighbors weren’t listening, they would resume their hushed reminiscences, only to grow fainter, and then ultimately fade into nothingness.
Their aperçus and declarations are unmistakably the creation of A.R. Gurney, one of modern theater’s most prolific and indispensable playwrights. In more than 30 plays in as many years, Mr. Gurney has returned again and again to the confident, well-lubricated, dying realm of WASPdom, although rarely with the understated daring of 1982’s “The Dining Room,” which is receiving a respectable if uneven revival by the Keen Company at the hands of director Jonathan Silverstein.
Of course, obituaries of this world — such as those issued for the theater itself, which has been consigned to its deathbed by fretting commentators for centuries — have consistently proved premature. This supposedly moribund territory has provided the author with decades worth of material; in 2006, nearly a quarter century after “The Dining Room” established Mr. Gurney’s reputation, his wonderful “Indian Blood” depicted a similar family similarly headed for a similarly well-heeled decline.
And even in 1982, he wrung knowing laughs out of the subject, as when a college student comes home to photograph his Aunt Harriet demonstrating the family’s dinner rituals. Only afterward does the nephew tell her the photos are part of an anthropology project on “the eating habits of various vanishing cultures.” (His disclosure is one of the very few events to disrupt the cocktail hour in this house.)
By focusing entirely on one room over the course of a single day — albeit one peopled by generations of family members — Mr. Gurney deftly charts the shifting fortunes within an extended family. (Some of Thornton Wilder’s short plays, notably “The Long Christmas Dinner,” are clear antecedents.) As these men and women (portrayed, as in 1982, by just six actors) come and go, skipping back and forth between generations, an entire world is created. A world of people with names — first names, mind you — such as Bradford and Standish, a world of finger bowls and club memberships and infidelities.
And that world coalesces every day at 7 p.m. each evening in the dining room. For the elder generation, the dinner hour is an oasis of calm; for the younger, it is both the embodiment of itchy, stifling formality and a crucial guide to cracking the code of adult behavior. It’s the room where the underage sneak a few sips from the liquor cabinet. It’s the room where you struggle in vain to jog the memory of a senile parent over Thanksgiving dinner. The only constants are a string of Irish maids, a drinks cart nearby, and an unfailing confidence that rooms like this will always, always be a part of life.
The construction is as beguiling as ever, with Mr. Silverstein maneuvering the cast crisply through the play’s overlapping comic and subdued vignettes. (Josh Bradford’s subtle lighting, which guides the viewer from dawn to nightfall, is pivotal in maintaining the structure.)
The performances, however, do not always live up to the material: Only three of the six actors steer clear of cartoonish exaggerations in creating the play’s dozens of characters. The very young and very old roles — which can prove common pitfalls for unsubtle performers — come off without a hitch, but the urge to differentiate occasionally pushes three of the performers to the brink of caricature.
In general, the women fare better than the men, with Samantha Soule and the terrific Anne McDonough offering particularly indelible characterizations. (Ms. McDonough starred in the original production; in one of those joyous dislocations that only theater can offer, she now plays the daughter of a grown woman she created 25 years ago.) Dan Daily has his share of affecting moments, too, and to be fair, the entire cast captures the author’s infrequent but potent stabs of emotion.
As an anthropological glimpse of a comfortable tribe’s death throes, then, Mr. Gurney may have gotten a bit ahead of himself. As a durable comedy of manners with sharp veins of melancholy, however, “The Dining Room” is very much alive.
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