What a fantastic show.
The Imago Theatre have outdone themselves with their latest, written
and directed by Imago’s own Carol Triffle: The Dinner is a
hilarious unpacking of all the insecurity and anxiety and jealousy and
resentment that could possibly be contained in one ill-fated dinner
party.
Dolores is a housewife and aspiring writer whose pretensions are a
little bit sweet and a little bit sad: “I’m feeling very ennui,” she
tells us at the beginning of the show. She’s preparing for an important
night—she’s invited a famous author to dinner at her house, along
with her husband and mixed-up family, but she doesn’t know how to set
the table properly, so she’s consulting Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette. Do you need to set out a soup spoon
if you’re not serving soup? Her family members arrive at dinner before
the author does, and with the addition of each person, from her prim,
judgmental mother to her smug, know-it-all sister, the likelihood that
this party will go off all right seems slimmer and slimmer. When the
author arrives (Darren McCarthy, bearing an uncanny resemblance to
Edward Scissorhands), the sheer, bold ridiculousness of this production
peaks in a recitation of erotic fiction that had the audience both
giggling and squirming in embarrassment.
The show is consistently funny, but not to be taken lightly: There
are points at which the anxiety level conveyed here is so genuinely
affecting I was practically reaching for my inhaler. Campy,
over-the-top characters transmit genuine pathos, particularly the
excellent Danielle Vermette as Dolores (nickname: Dodo), the pretty,
loopy, easily underestimated hostess. The acting is consistently great.
The set design: screwy and off-kilter and perspective defying, just
like the script.
Writer Carol Triffle has a keen sense of the subterranean
motivations driving people to act the way they do: Witness the
character of Lucy, Dolores’ sister, a resentful, status-obsessed social
climber who relies on her successful friends to make her own life seem
more interesting. The Dinner is a post-modern exploration of the
theatrical in everyday life: It’s stylish, smart, funny, and clocks in
at a brisk, intermission-less 60 minutes. It’s hilariously
uncomfortable, completely original, and utterly worth seeing.