“The Dining Room” is a play that lacks a linear plot. Instead, it uses seven actors to play 50 parts in 19 stories that take place in the dining room of an upper middle class home.
Winterport Open Stage, returning after a three-year hiatus, vividly brings A.R. Gurney’s 1982 two-act play to life at the Samuel L. Wagner Middle School in Winterport. It is funny, witty and frothy, just what audiences have come to expect from the company over the past three decades.
Gurney was a prolific playwright, who died in 2017 in New York City at the age of 86. In addition to “The Dining Room,” his most popular plays include “The Cocktail Hour,” “Sylvia” and “Love Letters.” Gurney skewered the lifestyle and values of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in most of his plays.
“His settings were often the stately homes of the well-to-do. His characters included self-satisfied corporate executives, crusty academics, imperious dowagers and bewildered teenagers on the cusp of adulthood,” the New York Times wrote in his obituary. “In his hands, the conventions of the drawing-room comedy became the framework for social analysis. His astute observations were leavened with tart humor, and he was adept at using misunderstandings, either accidental or willful, as fuel for drama.”
The Winterport company, which first presented “The Dining Room” 25 years ago, did not launch a production last year or in 2024 but produced two comedies in 2023: “Popcorn Falls” and “But Why Bump Off Barney?” Founded in 1993, Winterport Open Stage is the second oldest community theater company in Greater Bangor after Bangor Community Theater, which was created in 1969. Like many volunteer theater groups across the county, the Winterport company has struggled since the pandemic to regularly produce shows as it did before 2020 when it staged one or two shows — most often comedies — each year at the middle school.
Rebecca Poole, who has directed “In the Next Room” and “The Thanksgiving Play” for New Surry Theatre in Blue Hill, directs the cast of four men and three women in Winterport. She expertly paces this show so that it rarely slows as one scene begins as another is ending. She also uses the opulent dining room set well.
“It is like finding a box full of snapshots in your new home of the life that existed in the room but is now gone,” Poole said of the play in the program. “Although this is a play about change, cultural, social and personal, it is also a play about memory and the time spent together over simple meals throughout the day.”
The cast includes theatrical veterans Molly Dubovy, Blane Shaw, Ralph Chapman, Rylee Griffith, S. Harris Hall and Jim Tatgenhorst. Ed Russell makes his stage debut in this show. Together they create a tight-knit ensemble who are so equally talented that it is impossible to single one out as giving a finer performance than another.
Many of the best laughs come in scenes where adult actors play children vying for the attention of adults who enjoy gaining an advantage over them at the dinner table. There’s a silly birthday party, a fraught Thanksgiving dinner, an argument between a grown daughter and her father and other scenes that will feel familiar to theatergoers.
Robert DesLauiers’ set works beautifully on the stage in the multi-purpose room at the middle school. The props by Brianne Smith and lighting design by Jenny Hart complement it well as the dining room table, chairs, china and glassware become as important to the story as the characters.
“The Dining Room” is a triumphant return to its roots for Winterport Open Stage. Theatergoers seeking a fun evening or afternoon won’t be disappointed.
Winterport Open Stage will perform “The Dining Room” at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Samuel L. Wagner Middle School, 19 William Way, in Winterport. For more information, visit winterportopenstage.net.