Theater: Dinner With Friends

Facing an increasingly inhospitable Broadway environment, the best new straight plays have sought homes off-Broadway. The premise of this recent arrival is mundane: surprised by the marital breakup of their best friends, a couple are forced to examine their own comfortable marriage. But in pondering issues of intimacy, passion and the pleasures and dolors of conjugal routine, Margulies writes about relationships with such intelligence and spiky humor that his comedy-drama–acted and directed with perfect pitch–becomes something quite wonderful.

–By William Tynan