Play Review

T.C. Williams Serves Up
An Appetizing ‘Dining Room’

By Alex Holachek (November 25, 2005)

Periodically Lasso Online will be publishing reviews written by Mason students who are participating in Cappies, a national program in which high school theater critics attend and critique plays and musicals at area high schools. The following review of T.C. Williams’s production of “The Dining Room” will be published in the Alexandria insert of The Washington Post.

“Every generation has to make an effort,” preaches an aloof patriarch to his bereft adult daughter in one particularly affecting scene of A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room.” These words echo throughout the 18 vignettes that comprise the play, staged by T.C. Williams in a consistently well-acted and thoughtfully produced interpretation. Charting the rise and gradual decline of the upper-middle class family in the 20th century, the play features a constantly changing cast of characters that all “make an effort” in their own ways--often comically, sometimes painfully, and occasionally with the aid of a stiff drink-- to define themselves through meaningful relationships. A single stately dining room is the setting for all the emotional intrigue that inevitably follows.

Student director Abigail Downs crafted a play consisting of tableaus suggestive of universal themes, de-emphasizing the play’s social commentary in favor of a focus on character. Such a decision freed the actors to commit fully to their numerous roles. Often, a distinctive gait or particular hand movement was all it took to establish a strongly rendered character in a matter of seconds.

Lauren Trowbridge was one such actor, playing sophisticates and maids with commensurate finesse. Rachel Arriaga and Raymond Ejiofor both demonstrated an admirable ability to portray boisterous children in certain vignettes and then revert to more nuanced performances, such as Ejiofor’s nervous adulterer and Arriaga’s inimitable construction worker. It was almost startling how well Beth Wherry could alternate between a pre-adolescent boy in one scene and a middle-aged sexpot in another. Carol Clark’s gentle rendition of a mother whose dementia has deprived her of the ability to recognize her own sons was poignant in its restraint. The play featured a plethora of such excellent performances.

The dining room set itself, arguably a character in its own right, appeared to have been plucked directly from some elegant New England mansion. The attention to detail, evident in such touches as a glimpse of a staircase through a door leading offstage, lent an atmosphere of realism to the entire production. Costumes could occasionally be so subtle that they failed to suggest the decade, increasing the play’s timeless appeal (though amusingly, no one could dispute which scenes were set in the 80’s.)

Though the upper-crust lifestyle of the characters depicted in “The Dining Room” underwent a slow demise, T.C. Williams’s engaging production demonstrated that its ability to stage engrossing human drama is greater than ever.