Players Circle’s ‘Dining Room’ comic, touching homage to slice of vanishing Americana
Players Circle Theatre at the Shell Factory will present A.R. Gurney’s The Dining Room January 7 through February 2.
The play is set in the dining room of a well-to-do household – the place where the family assembles for breakfast, for dinner and for sundry special occasions. But this dining room is anything but typical. That’s because Gurney’s living room “exists in a void” compliments of a minimalist set; a cast called upon to portray multiple characters in the tradition of Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery and Let Nothing You Dismay; and a non-linear timeline where nothing matters that occurred before each of the play’s 18 distinct vignettes, or which follows. In other words, The Dining Room is vintage Gurney.
The action is comprised 
of a mosaic of scenes—some funny, others touching, many rueful. Taken together, they create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or so-called WASP family. In this context, Gurney has the actors who are cast in this play change roles, personalities and ages with virtuoso skill 
as they rush to portray a wide variety of characters – from little boys to stern grandfathers, from giggling teenage girls to Irish housemaids.
Each vignette introduces a new set of people and events. A father lectures his son on grammar and politics. A boy returns from boarding school to discover his mother’s infidelity. 
A senile grandmother doesn’t recognize her own sons at Christmas dinner. A daughter, her marriage a shambles, pleads futilely to return home. A brother and sister divide a parent’s possessions. Girls search for liquor and pot. A nephew does research for his college paper.
Dovetailing swiftly 
and smoothly, sometimes beginning before the prior one ends, the varied scenes depicted in The Dining Room ultimately coalesce into a theatrical experience of exceptional range, compassion, humor and abundant humanity.
In sum, The Dining Room is a brilliantly-conceived and richly 
humorous tour-de-force from the author of Sylvia and Cocktail Hour that provides strong opportunities for the Players Circle directors and cast to explicate a variety of timely themes ranging from adultery, vanishing customs and the treatment of domestic help to homosexuality, Alzheimer’s, sex, drugs, women’s education and family values.
The Players Circle Theatre performs at the Shell Factory, which is located at 16554 N. Cleveland Ave. in North Fort Myers, just five miles and a 10-minute drive north of downtown Fort Myers. For more information, please visit http://www.playerscircle.org.
December 18, 2019.
About the Author
Tom Hall is both an amateur artist and aspiring novelist who writes art quest thrillers. He is in the final stages of completing his debut novel titled "Art Detective," a story that fictionalizes the discovery of the fabled billion-dollar Impressionist collection of Parisian art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, thought by many to have perished during World War II when the collection's hiding place, Castle de Rastignac in southern France, was destroyed by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for attacks made by members of the Resistance operating in the area. A former tax attorney, Tom holds a bachelor's degree as well as both a juris doctorate and masters of laws in taxation from the University of Florida. Tom lives in Estero, Florida with his fiancee, Connie, and their four cats.