All the Drama: “Dinner With Friends”, 2000 Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama

August 9, 202500:31:49

All The Drama is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of deep dives into the plays that have won The Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama: “Dinner With Friends”2000 Pulitzer winner “Dinner With Friends”,

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[00:00]
Jan Simpson
Summer fun goes great with family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16 128GB8 2,999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile the year is 2000. People around the world are celebrating the new millennium and breathing a sigh of relief that a feared Y2K bug hadn't caused computers and software systems to go crazy as their calendars flipped into a new century. But there is new anxiety as the dot com boom that had fueled a nearly decade long bull market turned into a dot com crash as investors realized that many Internet companies were worth far less than they've been saying they were, with some even going bankrupt. Meanwhile, both liberals and conservatives are talking about marriage, education for poor people, and the effect of divorce on children families at all income levels. And in that year of 2000, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Donald Margulies Dinner with Friends, a deceptively simple drama about how a divorce between one couple can ripple out into the kindred partnerships, friendships and other connections that tie people to one another. My name is Jan Simpson. Welcome to all the Drama, a podcast about the plays and musicals that have won American theater's highest accolade, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Donald Margulies had been a finalist for the Pulitzer twice before he finally won the prize. His winner, Dinner with Friends, focused on two upper middle class couples, but most of Margulies earlier works involved Jewish themes, working class characters and the often uneasy relationships between parents and their grown children, all reflections of his own upbringing as a lower middle class Jewish kid dreaming of a more sophisticated life than the one in which he grew up. He was born In Brooklyn on September 2, 1954, the second son of Charlene and Bob Margulies, a wallpaper salesman. The Margulies household wasn't a wealthy one and the parents weren't intellectuals, but they did revere the theater. Bob Margulies regularly brought home and played the cast recordings of hit Broadway musicals, and the family sometimes went to sea shows which were then still affordable for a family of four willing to sit high up in balcony seats twice instead of using their annual vacation to visit some historic site or to relax at one of the upstate summer camps that were popular with many Jewish families back then. The Margolis took the subway into Manhattan, checked into a reasonably priced hotel, and spent a week cramming in as many shows as they could see. Margulies remembers that he was about nine when he saw his first non musical. It was Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns, with Jason Robards as a free spirit forced to choose between getting a traditional job or losing custody of his beloved nephew. It made a lasting impression. The young Margolies started reading plays soon after that and was particularly taken by Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, maybe because its main character, Willy Loman, reminded him somewhat of his own salesman father. But Donald still spent most of his time drawing, which had always come easily to him, and when it came time for college, he went to Pratt Institute, planning to focus on becoming a visual artist. It didn't take long for him to realize that the conservatory approach at Pratt wasn't a good fit for him, so he transferred to SUNY Purchase, where he still majored in visual arts. But he also worked up the courage to pursue his secret desire to write plays by approaching Julius Novick, who taught dramatic literature at the school, and asking Novick to teach him about playwriting. Novick took Margulies under his wing and remained a mentor for years. After graduation from Purchase, Margulies supported himself as a freelance graphic artist and later as an art editor at Scholastic magazine, while he continued to write plays and tried to get them staged. His first professional production was a one act adaptation of a short story by the writer and poet Delmore Schwartz that was commissioned by the Jewish repertory theater in 1982. The next year that company staged his first full length play, Gifted Children, which centered on a pregnant woman who had been raised by a single mother and who now has to decide if she should have an abortion and pursue the career she wants or make the same sacrifice her mother did. The New York Times critic Frank Rich didn't think much of Gifted Children. He called it amateurish, but the play caught the attention of Gail Merrifield, the literary manager at the Public Theater and the wife of its founding producer, Joe Papp. They thought Margulies showed promise, and in 1984 the public staged his play Found a Peanut, about a group of kids who find a bag of money buried in the backyard behind the Brooklyn tenements where they lived. Frank Rich wasn't crazy about that one either, but lots of other people liked it and the play launched Margulies. He soon joined the stable of young writers who found a home at Manhattan Theatre Club. And he began to be produced in other parts of the country, too. What's Wrong with this Picture? A fantasy about a Jewish mother's return from the Dead, opened at MTC in 1988. The Lohman family Picnic, which centered around a Jewish boy's bar mitzvah and whose title paid homage to Arthur Miller's play, opened there in 1989. And the model Apartment, a drama about the relationship between Holocaust survivors and their troubled daughter, premiered in Los Angeles in 1988. But the big breakthrough for Margulies came with Sight Unseen, a play about the tense reunion between a successful artist and his former lover and one time muse. It had been commissioned by South Coast Republic in Costa Mesa, California, and opened at MTC in 1992. And this time even Frank Rich had good things to say. The play quickly transferred for a commercial run at the Orpheum Theater, running for a combined total of 293 performances. It was also named a Pulitzer finalist four years later. In 1996, came Collected Stories, a two hander about the complicated relationship between a famous writer and her protege. That is one of my personal favorites of Margulies's plays. That year's six member Pulitzer jury liked it, too. They put Collected Stories on their shortlist for the Drama award, along with Tina Howe's Pride's Crossing and Alfred Urie's the Last Night of Ballyhoo. But the Pulitzer board, which has the final say on all Pulitzer awards, ignored the jury's recommendations and declined to give the prize to any play that year. And then came Dinner with Friends. It centers around Gabe and Karen, professional food writers, who introduced his best friend, a lawyer named Tom, to her best friend, an artist named Beth, when they were all in their 20s. Now, 12 years later, Gate and Karen are horrified when they learn that Tom and Beth are separating. And they're frightened about what that divorce might mean for their own marriage, their ties to their friends, and their sense of who each of them has become. Dinner with Friends premiered at the Humana Festival of New American plays in 1988 and then made a stop at South Coast Rep before opening Off Broadway at the Variety arts Theater in 1999, where it ran for 654 performances. It won the New Play Award from the American Theatre Critics association, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play, and of course, it won the Pulitzer. But love, marriage and friendship are universal concerns and productions of Dinner with Friends have been staged all over the world, including in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. In 2001, Margulies adapted the play for a movie that ran and that is still available on HBO, with a starry cast that included Andie McDowell as Karen, Dennis Quaid as Gabe, Toni Collette as Beth, and Greg Kinnear as Tom. In 2014, Pam McKinnon directed a well received revival for the Roundabout Theater Company that featured Marin Henkel as Karen, Jeremy Shamos as Gabe, Heather Burns as Beth, and Darren Petty as Tom. Through it all, Margulies has continued writing, producing such notable works as Brooklyn Boy, Time Stands still, the Country House, and just earlier this year, Lunar Eclipse. He has also maintained an active teaching life as a professor of English and theater at Yale. So I was very grateful when he agreed to take time from his very busy schedule to talk with me about Dinner With Friends. Hello, Donald Margulies, welcome to all the Drama.
[12:10]
Donald Margulies
Well, thank you for inviting me.
[12:13]
Jan Simpson
I'm going to start off with the question I've asked all of your fellow Pulitzer honorees, which is, do you remember how you got the news that your play Dinner with Friends had won the Pulitzer?
[12:29]
Donald Margulies
Well, Jen, you know, it was my third time up for the Pulitzer, and the first time, I think, was in 1992, and that was a total surprise to have been named a finalist. And a few years after that, Collected Stories was a finalist, and that was one of the dubious achievement years where there was no prize given. And then when Dinner with Friends came along, everybody was saying, oh, this is your year. This is your year. You're going to get it this time. And my agent, my late beloved agent, Howard Rosenstone, was one of the persons who felt very strongly that I should be prepared on the day of the announcement. And I was in Seattle at the time. I was premiering an adaptation I did of Sholem Ascher's Yiddish classic God of Vengeance at ACT in Seattle. And I was in rehearsal, but I was also told to sort of stay by the phone. And my. My agent called me from a taxi because he was on his way to the airport. He had just been notified, so he notified me, said that I had won the prize. And then the minute I got off the phone from Howard and was about to call my wife, who, who was a physician then, now a retired physician, but she was working in a community health clinic in New Haven. And as I was about to call her, the phone rang and it was an interview from ap, I think. And I said, could you call me back in 10 minutes. I want to tell my wife. And I was able to do that. And it was really delightful to be given this honor. You know, I think that when something like this happens, as one approaches mid career, as opposed to early in one's career, it begins to feel like a career prize more than it does even for individual work. And I think the fact that I had been a finalist twice before, it did feel a little bit like, well, third time is the charm.
[14:33]
Jan Simpson
Would you talk a little bit about the genesis of the play that finally made you the bride and not just a bridesmaid?
[14:44]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, it's curious. I mean, every play that I've ever written has always come out of a place of, you know, mild obsession about something. If some phenomenon is occurring around me and I find that I'm thinking about it a great deal, it very often will manifest itself in the form of a play. And I think at the time that I was putting together the play that became Dinner with Friends, my wife and I were experiencing the phenomenon of relationships all around us beginning to collapse. Relationships and friendships that we thought were eternal and dependable. And. And there were a succession of these events all around us. And we were like the last couple clutching one another in the wreckage of the Titanic. And I just found that I was thinking a lot about midlife and child rearing and marriage and friendship and fidelity, and all of those things sort of converged and became Dinner with Friends.
[15:49]
Jan Simpson
One of the things that I found really interesting about the play, I found many things interesting, but one was that even though ostensibly it's about a couple's divorce, you also deal with all of the other relationships in this quartet. And I wondered, was that always your intention? Did it grow that way in the way you structured the play? Each of the characters has a scene, one on one with the other.
[16:25]
Donald Margulies
Mm, that's right. Well, I always knew that I was more interested in sort of the reverberations of divorce on close friends as opposed to simply on the couple and sort of the collateral damage or the collateral existential crisis that is the result of this kind of life changing event. As I was structuring the play initially. And the first act consists of three scenes that all occur over the course of a single snowy night in Connecticut. And the first scene is of Gabe and Karen and Bess at the end of dinner. And then the second scene, we follow Beth home, where the absent Tom, who is. Who is not present in the first scene, appears. And then in the third scene of that first day, we sort of we do another jump, of taking Tom into Gabe and Karen's nest, into their living room. So there was a kind of symmetry to that that I found very pleasing. And then the second act began to evolve. And the way that was looking was I had the two women together, the two men together, and then Gabe and Karen together at the end of the play. And I realized that the way that I had structured it didn't permit me a scene in which all four appear together. And I felt that in order for the play to really have an emotional resonance, that we really needed to see what was there, what was lost, in order for there to be a fully emotionally satisfying journey. And that's where the. The idea of having what that flashback scene, which is really the centerpiece of these two triptychs of scenes. And. And that takes place about 12 years earlier. And I initially, when I came up with that idea, I said, well, maybe this play needs to be three acts. And I realized I didn't need a whole act. I really needed sort of the stage equivalent of a snapshot. And that is really what that scene, for me, achieved was giving us an opportunity to see the four of them interacting. And the event of the scene was the momentous meeting of Tom and Beth that was really the result of Gabe and Karen's machinations.
[18:52]
Jan Simpson
Another thing that struck me is that there are no villains in this play.
[18:57]
Donald Margulies
So glad to hear you say that.
[19:01]
Jan Simpson
Even the characters that initially we might think we don't like you give them a chance to make their case. Was that a challenge?
[19:14]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I think. And this is something I teach my students, is that. That so much of playwriting is about empathy and is about getting inside the heads of people, not us, who have different values, different experiences, different points of view, and give their point of view dignity and credibility. And don't judge them, just give them a voice. And I think that that is really what was at play here in this quartet and is that I wanted them all to be human and flawed and complicated, but that there is no villain in the story. If there's any villain, it's time and its impact on people, some of whom deal with time in a much more respectable way, and others are totally freaked out by it. And I think that was part of what governed the take on the four characters.
[20:17]
Jan Simpson
I've seen the play, I've seen the movie. I've read the play a couple of times. And each time I find myself thinking about my own life, my own relationships.
[20:31]
Donald Margulies
I hope so.
[20:32]
Jan Simpson
Yeah. One question I've always had Though, about the play is, and this is just a personal question, why did you make Gabe and Karen food writers?
[20:44]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I wanted men to work together. I didn't know what I wanted them to do. I wanted them to have the sort of marriage that was not just a partnership in life, but a partnership in livelihood. And I didn't know exactly what it would be. I wanted to give them a pursuit that was inherently domestic and nurturing without it being too coy. Also, I wrote it at a time when the foodie culture was very much discussed in our social criticism. And I just thought it would be fun to give them that pursuit and to have them begin the play having come back from a trip to Italy. And that really gave me sort of the motor for that first scene. So what they did for a living became so integral to the world of the play.
[21:43]
Jan Simpson
Does the play feel differently to you now, 25 years later when you look back, or do you not do that kind of thinking about your play?
[21:54]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, when I do view work that I wrote as a younger man, which is everything to date, then, you know, I'm not the sort of playwright who just sort of groans and says, oh, why did I do that? I just think, huh, why did he do that? Or what was he thinking? Because I don't necessarily see myself as that 40ish young playwright who was experiencing these things for the first time and trying to process those events in life. I respect what his view was at the time. So that the play that I just had in New York called Lunar Eclipse is a play also about marriage, but from very much the vantage point of someone much closer to my experience now as a person who turned 70 last year. And it's also a story of marriage, but from the point of view of late in life as opposed to middle life. And I assume that, you know, this captures things that I could not have imagined when I was a 45 year old writer, or whatever it was when I wrote that. I just think that the plays tend to reflect, tend to be sort of time capsules of the times in which they were created. So that's, that's sort of how I view it.
[23:15]
Jan Simpson
The play was such a success, it was extended many times, but it did transfer to Broadway. Is that something you wanted at the time or considered at the time?
[23:29]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I was, when I was coming up in the theater, I was never aiming for Broadway. I just didn't think in the terms of Broadway when I was writing. Well, you know, I guess I didn't see myself As a mainstream writer of that nature, what I aspired to was to be produced by Joe Papp. And I was produced by Joe Papp when I was 29 with my play Found a Peanut. And that for me was sort of the first arrival in my career as a playwright. So, you know, and when Dinner with Friends was produced, we cast an ensemble of solid New York actors, but not one of them was considered a star. And Even then, even 25 years ago, in order to move a play, you really needed names, you know, in the mercantile sense, and we didn't have that. And so I was content to have assembled this lovely quartet, this ensemble, and didn't imagine that it would be on Broadway. And frankly, nobody came to me to move it to Broadway, you know, so we did settle in. We had commercial producers from the very beginning in New York. Mitchell Maxwell was the producer, along with his sister and some other partners. And we settled into the Variety Arts Theater, the late lamented Variety Arts Theater. And we had an 18 month run, which was really just wonderful. And I think if we had attempted to move to Broadway, which again was never on the table with this configuration of the play, I think we would have struggled. I don't think the play would have had the life that it ended up having.
[25:27]
Jan Simpson
But you did have the experience of turning the play into a screenplay. What was that experience like for you?
[25:37]
Donald Margulies
Well, frankly, that was not a wonderful experience. The screenplay is my screenplay. But the realization of the script really just didn't. It didn't look the way I'd wanted it to look. I wanted something that was much less again, star driven, which is what the film became. But that was also part of the. The fun of it was to imagine it with Dennis quaid and Andy McDowells and sort of a pre stardom Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear. I mean, you know, a lovely group of actors and Norman Jewison directed it. But it just, you know, I guess I always imagined it the way I never imagined a Broadway production. I always imagined it sort of an independent looking film and not a studio picture, which is sort of my impression of it in this configuration on hbo. Look, I'm delighted that it was made. If people know the play only from the film, I urge them to read the play because I think the experience. And you have now seen the film and read and seen the play. I think you probably know what I'm referring to. It's just tonally they're very different to experiences.
[27:01]
Jan Simpson
One of the things that's interesting to me as I've done This series is looking at what happens to playwrights after they win the Pulitzer. And the experiences have been varied. You clearly have had a successful career after winning the prize, but did it have an effect on your writing, on your thinking about your work?
[27:33]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I ran into Frank D. Gilroy, who won the Pulitzer for the Subject Was Roses shortly after I won for Dinner With Friends. And Frank said to me, don't do what I did. He said, after I won the Pulitzer, I spent years trying to write a Pulitzer Prize winning play. He said, just write another fucking play. And that was the best advice that I received. And, you know, it's so earthy and fundamental. But it was wonderful to hear Frank give me that incredible wisdom that he had. He had experienced himself. He had to come to that conclusion. And so that was. That was a gift to get that, that benediction from Frank Gilroy.
[28:23]
Jan Simpson
Did it also help? Because it had come perhaps later in your career. You'd already written a number of successful plays, been a finalist. You'd already sort of been recognized.
[28:41]
Donald Margulies
Yes, I am grateful that I did not receive the prize with sight unseen in 1992, when I guess I was, what, 37 years old. It was a gift to be a finalist. It suggested that people are hearing me and taking me seriously. And I thought, wow, that's a wonderful acknowledgement. But I didn't have the burden of the prize itself. I really just had sort of the equivalent of the pat on the back and. And continue doing your good work. I'm truly grateful for that. I'm glad I didn't win a day. Robert Schenken won for the Kentucky Cycle.
[29:20]
Jan Simpson
Yes.
[29:21]
Donald Margulies
And with Collected Stories, it was, you know, I had a few years to write some more plays after the acknowledgement of the finalist status of Sight Unseen. So I was very grateful for that. So again, by the time Dinner With Friends came along, I did have a body of work. I was able to move forward. And with Frank Gilroy's advice, I think I simply tried to write good plays, not worry about prizes so much. But one thing, and I don't know if my colleagues, I'm sure they experience things like this, but when you win a prize like that, suddenly people are inviting you places that you had not been invited before, you know, to give talks, to give workshops. And that's very tantalizing. It's very seductive to be feted at various universities around the country. It's fun and it's not writing. And so I did that for a little while because I thought, well, I may as well enjoy this while it's here, you know, because it's all so ephemeral. And I did enjoy it. And, you know, I still enjoy it, although now I have sort of an emeritus status, I think more than, you know, it's a generation later, and I recognize that. But I did enjoy the. I did enjoy the aftermath. And, you know, I would jokingly say that the wonderful thing about winning a Pulitzer Prize is that now everything that I have written was written by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Right? And, you know, my late colleague Wendy Wasserstein said when she won, she said, well, now I know what the first line of my obituary is going to be. And of course, it was the first line of her obituary, and it will probably be the first line of all of us who have been handed that title in our day.
[31:18]
Jan Simpson
Well, it puts you in this canon of dramatic literature that will live on. And so we have to be grateful to those of you who have produced this work that we will, you know, just always have. And I also want to thank you for taking time to look back and talk to us about Dinner with Friends.
[31:48]
Donald Margulies
Well, it was a pleasure to talk to you, Jan. Good luck with your projects.
[31:52]
Jan Simpson
Thank you. Thank you again, and thank you for listening. I hope you'll come back next time. And if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please send them to me@janbruddleidradio.com from the Cascades to PDX to your kitchen, we recycle like we live here. That's why governments, brands, and recycling companies are all joining together to bring change, to make recycling better. As in trusting that your recyclables end up in the right places to be made into new things and having brands help fund the cost of recycling. You can find the Latest updates@recycleon.org Oregon. From Mount Hood to the bin under your desk, together we can do this.

All the Drama: “Dinner With Friends”, 2000 Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama

August 9, 202500:31:49

Summary5 min read

BroadwayRadio Episode Summary: "All the Drama: 'Dinner With Friends'"

Release Date: August 9, 2025

Introduction

In this episode of BroadwayRadio's premier podcast series, host Jan Simpson delves deep into the world of American theater's acclaimed play, "Dinner with Friends" by Donald Margulies. Celebrated as the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner, the episode offers an insightful exploration of the play's themes, Margulies's creative process, and the profound impact of receiving such a prestigious accolade.

Donald Margulies: A Brief Biography

Jan Simpson opens the discussion by tracing Donald Margulies's journey as a playwright. Born on September 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, Margulies grew up in a modest, theater-loving household. His father, Bob Margulies, was a wallpaper salesman who nurtured his son's appreciation for Broadway by bringing home cast recordings and taking the family to numerous theater performances. This early exposure ignited Margulies's passion for playwriting, leading him to study visual arts before transitioning to writing under the mentorship of Julius Novick at SUNY Purchase.

Margulies's early works, such as "Gifted Children" and "Found a Peanut," established him within the Manhattan Theatre Club's young writers' stable. Despite initial mixed reviews, his persistent creativity paved the way for later successes, culminating in the Pulitzer win for "Dinner with Friends."

The Genesis of "Dinner with Friends"

When discussing the origins of "Dinner with Friends," Margulies explains that the play emerged from his and his wife's observations of declining relationships around them. He describes the period as one where "relationships and friendships that we thought were eternal and dependable" began to "collapse," inspiring him to explore themes of midlife crises, marriage, and fidelity.

[14:44] Donald Margulies: "I was thinking a lot about midlife and child rearing and marriage and friendship and fidelity, and all of those things sort of converged and became 'Dinner with Friends.'"

Themes and Structure of the Play

Margulies emphasizes that "Dinner with Friends" is less about the divorce of a single couple and more about the ripple effects that such personal upheavals have on a broader social circle. The play meticulously examines the interconnectedness of relationships, portraying how one couple's separation can lead to an "existential crisis" for their friends.

The structure of the play is notably non-traditional. The first act unfolds over a single snowy night in Connecticut, presenting scenes that showcase the immediate impact of Tom and Beth's separation on Gabe and Karen's marriage and friendships. Margulies highlights the absence of a primary antagonist, focusing instead on "time and its impact on people" as the driving force of conflict.

[18:56] Donald Margulies: "There is no villain in the story. If there's any villain, it's time and its impact on people."

Character Development and Empathy

A standout feature of Margulies's writing, as discussed in the episode, is his commitment to creating multifaceted characters without traditional antagonists. He strives to present each character with "dignity and credibility," ensuring that even those who might initially seem unsympathetic are portrayed with depth and humanity.

[19:14] Donald Margulies: "So much of playwriting is about empathy and is about getting inside the heads of people... and give their point of view dignity and credibility."

Adaptation into Film

Margulies shares his experiences adapting "Dinner with Friends" into a screenplay for the 2001 film version. While appreciative of the film's success and its talented cast—Andie McDowell, Dennis Quaid, Toni Collette, and Greg Kinnear—he expresses some reservations about the final product, feeling it diverged from his original vision of the play.

[25:37] Donald Margulies: "I always imagined it sort of an independent looking film and not a studio picture... it's tonally a very different two experiences."

Winning the Pulitzer Prize

Receiving the Pulitzer Prize for "Dinner with Friends" marked a significant milestone in Margulies's career. Reflecting on the moment, he recounts the surprise and joy of winning after being a finalist twice before.

[12:28] Donald Margulies: "It was really delightful to be given this honor... third time is the charm."

Margulies credits his success to the body of work he had built over the years and the invaluable advice from fellow Pulitzer winner Frank D. Gilroy, who urged him to "just write another play" rather than striving solely for accolades.

[27:33] Donald Margulies: "Don't do what I did... just write another fucking play."

Impact on Career and Future Works

Post-Pulitzer, Margulies acknowledges the increase in opportunities and invitations to speak and teach, though he remains grounded in his primary passion for writing. He underscores the importance of viewing his plays as "time capsules" that reflect the eras in which they were created.

Margulies continues to contribute to the theater world, both through his writing—producing plays like "Brooklyn Boy," "Time Stands Still," and "Lunar Eclipse"—and through his role as a professor of English and theater at Yale University.

Conclusion

Jan Simpson closes the episode by highlighting the enduring legacy of "Dinner with Friends," both as a Pulitzer-winning play and as a relatable exploration of modern relationships. Margulies's thoughtful insights offer listeners a deeper appreciation of the complexities of interpersonal dynamics and the nuanced craft of playwriting.

[31:18] Donald Margulies: "The wonderful thing about winning a Pulitzer Prize is that now everything that I have written was written by a Pulitzer Prize winner."

Listeners are encouraged to experience both the play and its film adaptation to fully grasp the depth and emotional resonance that "Dinner with Friends" offers.

Notable Quotes:

On the genesis of the play:

[14:44] Donald Margulies: "I was thinking a lot about midlife and child rearing and marriage and friendship and fidelity, and all of those things sort of converged and became 'Dinner with Friends.'"
On the absence of villains:

[18:56] Donald Margulies: "There is no villain in the story. If there's any villain, it's time and its impact on people."
On winning the Pulitzer and career impact:

[27:33] Donald Margulies: "Don't do what I did... just write another fucking play."

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the BroadwayRadio episode, providing listeners with an engaging overview of "Dinner with Friends," Donald Margulies's artistic journey, and the profound significance of his Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

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Transcript31 lines

[00:00]
Jan Simpson
Summer fun goes great with family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16 128GB8 2,999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile the year is 2000. People around the world are celebrating the new millennium and breathing a sigh of relief that a feared Y2K bug hadn't caused computers and software systems to go crazy as their calendars flipped into a new century. But there is new anxiety as the dot com boom that had fueled a nearly decade long bull market turned into a dot com crash as investors realized that many Internet companies were worth far less than they've been saying they were, with some even going bankrupt. Meanwhile, both liberals and conservatives are talking about marriage, education for poor people, and the effect of divorce on children families at all income levels. And in that year of 2000, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Donald Margulies Dinner with Friends, a deceptively simple drama about how a divorce between one couple can ripple out into the kindred partnerships, friendships and other connections that tie people to one another. My name is Jan Simpson. Welcome to all the Drama, a podcast about the plays and musicals that have won American theater's highest accolade, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Donald Margulies had been a finalist for the Pulitzer twice before he finally won the prize. His winner, Dinner with Friends, focused on two upper middle class couples, but most of Margulies earlier works involved Jewish themes, working class characters and the often uneasy relationships between parents and their grown children, all reflections of his own upbringing as a lower middle class Jewish kid dreaming of a more sophisticated life than the one in which he grew up. He was born In Brooklyn on September 2, 1954, the second son of Charlene and Bob Margulies, a wallpaper salesman. The Margulies household wasn't a wealthy one and the parents weren't intellectuals, but they did revere the theater. Bob Margulies regularly brought home and played the cast recordings of hit Broadway musicals, and the family sometimes went to sea shows which were then still affordable for a family of four willing to sit high up in balcony seats twice instead of using their annual vacation to visit some historic site or to relax at one of the upstate summer camps that were popular with many Jewish families back then. The Margolis took the subway into Manhattan, checked into a reasonably priced hotel, and spent a week cramming in as many shows as they could see. Margulies remembers that he was about nine when he saw his first non musical. It was Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns, with Jason Robards as a free spirit forced to choose between getting a traditional job or losing custody of his beloved nephew. It made a lasting impression. The young Margolies started reading plays soon after that and was particularly taken by Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, maybe because its main character, Willy Loman, reminded him somewhat of his own salesman father. But Donald still spent most of his time drawing, which had always come easily to him, and when it came time for college, he went to Pratt Institute, planning to focus on becoming a visual artist. It didn't take long for him to realize that the conservatory approach at Pratt wasn't a good fit for him, so he transferred to SUNY Purchase, where he still majored in visual arts. But he also worked up the courage to pursue his secret desire to write plays by approaching Julius Novick, who taught dramatic literature at the school, and asking Novick to teach him about playwriting. Novick took Margulies under his wing and remained a mentor for years. After graduation from Purchase, Margulies supported himself as a freelance graphic artist and later as an art editor at Scholastic magazine, while he continued to write plays and tried to get them staged. His first professional production was a one act adaptation of a short story by the writer and poet Delmore Schwartz that was commissioned by the Jewish repertory theater in 1982. The next year that company staged his first full length play, Gifted Children, which centered on a pregnant woman who had been raised by a single mother and who now has to decide if she should have an abortion and pursue the career she wants or make the same sacrifice her mother did. The New York Times critic Frank Rich didn't think much of Gifted Children. He called it amateurish, but the play caught the attention of Gail Merrifield, the literary manager at the Public Theater and the wife of its founding producer, Joe Papp. They thought Margulies showed promise, and in 1984 the public staged his play Found a Peanut, about a group of kids who find a bag of money buried in the backyard behind the Brooklyn tenements where they lived. Frank Rich wasn't crazy about that one either, but lots of other people liked it and the play launched Margulies. He soon joined the stable of young writers who found a home at Manhattan Theatre Club. And he began to be produced in other parts of the country, too. What's Wrong with this Picture? A fantasy about a Jewish mother's return from the Dead, opened at MTC in 1988. The Lohman family Picnic, which centered around a Jewish boy's bar mitzvah and whose title paid homage to Arthur Miller's play, opened there in 1989. And the model Apartment, a drama about the relationship between Holocaust survivors and their troubled daughter, premiered in Los Angeles in 1988. But the big breakthrough for Margulies came with Sight Unseen, a play about the tense reunion between a successful artist and his former lover and one time muse. It had been commissioned by South Coast Republic in Costa Mesa, California, and opened at MTC in 1992. And this time even Frank Rich had good things to say. The play quickly transferred for a commercial run at the Orpheum Theater, running for a combined total of 293 performances. It was also named a Pulitzer finalist four years later. In 1996, came Collected Stories, a two hander about the complicated relationship between a famous writer and her protege. That is one of my personal favorites of Margulies's plays. That year's six member Pulitzer jury liked it, too. They put Collected Stories on their shortlist for the Drama award, along with Tina Howe's Pride's Crossing and Alfred Urie's the Last Night of Ballyhoo. But the Pulitzer board, which has the final say on all Pulitzer awards, ignored the jury's recommendations and declined to give the prize to any play that year. And then came Dinner with Friends. It centers around Gabe and Karen, professional food writers, who introduced his best friend, a lawyer named Tom, to her best friend, an artist named Beth, when they were all in their 20s. Now, 12 years later, Gate and Karen are horrified when they learn that Tom and Beth are separating. And they're frightened about what that divorce might mean for their own marriage, their ties to their friends, and their sense of who each of them has become. Dinner with Friends premiered at the Humana Festival of New American plays in 1988 and then made a stop at South Coast Rep before opening Off Broadway at the Variety arts Theater in 1999, where it ran for 654 performances. It won the New Play Award from the American Theatre Critics association, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play, and of course, it won the Pulitzer. But love, marriage and friendship are universal concerns and productions of Dinner with Friends have been staged all over the world, including in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. In 2001, Margulies adapted the play for a movie that ran and that is still available on HBO, with a starry cast that included Andie McDowell as Karen, Dennis Quaid as Gabe, Toni Collette as Beth, and Greg Kinnear as Tom. In 2014, Pam McKinnon directed a well received revival for the Roundabout Theater Company that featured Marin Henkel as Karen, Jeremy Shamos as Gabe, Heather Burns as Beth, and Darren Petty as Tom. Through it all, Margulies has continued writing, producing such notable works as Brooklyn Boy, Time Stands still, the Country House, and just earlier this year, Lunar Eclipse. He has also maintained an active teaching life as a professor of English and theater at Yale. So I was very grateful when he agreed to take time from his very busy schedule to talk with me about Dinner With Friends. Hello, Donald Margulies, welcome to all the Drama.
[12:10]
Donald Margulies
Well, thank you for inviting me.
[12:13]
Jan Simpson
I'm going to start off with the question I've asked all of your fellow Pulitzer honorees, which is, do you remember how you got the news that your play Dinner with Friends had won the Pulitzer?
[12:29]
Donald Margulies
Well, Jen, you know, it was my third time up for the Pulitzer, and the first time, I think, was in 1992, and that was a total surprise to have been named a finalist. And a few years after that, Collected Stories was a finalist, and that was one of the dubious achievement years where there was no prize given. And then when Dinner with Friends came along, everybody was saying, oh, this is your year. This is your year. You're going to get it this time. And my agent, my late beloved agent, Howard Rosenstone, was one of the persons who felt very strongly that I should be prepared on the day of the announcement. And I was in Seattle at the time. I was premiering an adaptation I did of Sholem Ascher's Yiddish classic God of Vengeance at ACT in Seattle. And I was in rehearsal, but I was also told to sort of stay by the phone. And my. My agent called me from a taxi because he was on his way to the airport. He had just been notified, so he notified me, said that I had won the prize. And then the minute I got off the phone from Howard and was about to call my wife, who, who was a physician then, now a retired physician, but she was working in a community health clinic in New Haven. And as I was about to call her, the phone rang and it was an interview from ap, I think. And I said, could you call me back in 10 minutes. I want to tell my wife. And I was able to do that. And it was really delightful to be given this honor. You know, I think that when something like this happens, as one approaches mid career, as opposed to early in one's career, it begins to feel like a career prize more than it does even for individual work. And I think the fact that I had been a finalist twice before, it did feel a little bit like, well, third time is the charm.
[14:33]
Jan Simpson
Would you talk a little bit about the genesis of the play that finally made you the bride and not just a bridesmaid?
[14:44]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, it's curious. I mean, every play that I've ever written has always come out of a place of, you know, mild obsession about something. If some phenomenon is occurring around me and I find that I'm thinking about it a great deal, it very often will manifest itself in the form of a play. And I think at the time that I was putting together the play that became Dinner with Friends, my wife and I were experiencing the phenomenon of relationships all around us beginning to collapse. Relationships and friendships that we thought were eternal and dependable. And. And there were a succession of these events all around us. And we were like the last couple clutching one another in the wreckage of the Titanic. And I just found that I was thinking a lot about midlife and child rearing and marriage and friendship and fidelity, and all of those things sort of converged and became Dinner with Friends.
[15:49]
Jan Simpson
One of the things that I found really interesting about the play, I found many things interesting, but one was that even though ostensibly it's about a couple's divorce, you also deal with all of the other relationships in this quartet. And I wondered, was that always your intention? Did it grow that way in the way you structured the play? Each of the characters has a scene, one on one with the other.
[16:25]
Donald Margulies
Mm, that's right. Well, I always knew that I was more interested in sort of the reverberations of divorce on close friends as opposed to simply on the couple and sort of the collateral damage or the collateral existential crisis that is the result of this kind of life changing event. As I was structuring the play initially. And the first act consists of three scenes that all occur over the course of a single snowy night in Connecticut. And the first scene is of Gabe and Karen and Bess at the end of dinner. And then the second scene, we follow Beth home, where the absent Tom, who is. Who is not present in the first scene, appears. And then in the third scene of that first day, we sort of we do another jump, of taking Tom into Gabe and Karen's nest, into their living room. So there was a kind of symmetry to that that I found very pleasing. And then the second act began to evolve. And the way that was looking was I had the two women together, the two men together, and then Gabe and Karen together at the end of the play. And I realized that the way that I had structured it didn't permit me a scene in which all four appear together. And I felt that in order for the play to really have an emotional resonance, that we really needed to see what was there, what was lost, in order for there to be a fully emotionally satisfying journey. And that's where the. The idea of having what that flashback scene, which is really the centerpiece of these two triptychs of scenes. And. And that takes place about 12 years earlier. And I initially, when I came up with that idea, I said, well, maybe this play needs to be three acts. And I realized I didn't need a whole act. I really needed sort of the stage equivalent of a snapshot. And that is really what that scene, for me, achieved was giving us an opportunity to see the four of them interacting. And the event of the scene was the momentous meeting of Tom and Beth that was really the result of Gabe and Karen's machinations.
[18:52]
Jan Simpson
Another thing that struck me is that there are no villains in this play.
[18:57]
Donald Margulies
So glad to hear you say that.
[19:01]
Jan Simpson
Even the characters that initially we might think we don't like you give them a chance to make their case. Was that a challenge?
[19:14]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I think. And this is something I teach my students, is that. That so much of playwriting is about empathy and is about getting inside the heads of people, not us, who have different values, different experiences, different points of view, and give their point of view dignity and credibility. And don't judge them, just give them a voice. And I think that that is really what was at play here in this quartet and is that I wanted them all to be human and flawed and complicated, but that there is no villain in the story. If there's any villain, it's time and its impact on people, some of whom deal with time in a much more respectable way, and others are totally freaked out by it. And I think that was part of what governed the take on the four characters.
[20:17]
Jan Simpson
I've seen the play, I've seen the movie. I've read the play a couple of times. And each time I find myself thinking about my own life, my own relationships.
[20:31]
Donald Margulies
I hope so.
[20:32]
Jan Simpson
Yeah. One question I've always had Though, about the play is, and this is just a personal question, why did you make Gabe and Karen food writers?
[20:44]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I wanted men to work together. I didn't know what I wanted them to do. I wanted them to have the sort of marriage that was not just a partnership in life, but a partnership in livelihood. And I didn't know exactly what it would be. I wanted to give them a pursuit that was inherently domestic and nurturing without it being too coy. Also, I wrote it at a time when the foodie culture was very much discussed in our social criticism. And I just thought it would be fun to give them that pursuit and to have them begin the play having come back from a trip to Italy. And that really gave me sort of the motor for that first scene. So what they did for a living became so integral to the world of the play.
[21:43]
Jan Simpson
Does the play feel differently to you now, 25 years later when you look back, or do you not do that kind of thinking about your play?
[21:54]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, when I do view work that I wrote as a younger man, which is everything to date, then, you know, I'm not the sort of playwright who just sort of groans and says, oh, why did I do that? I just think, huh, why did he do that? Or what was he thinking? Because I don't necessarily see myself as that 40ish young playwright who was experiencing these things for the first time and trying to process those events in life. I respect what his view was at the time. So that the play that I just had in New York called Lunar Eclipse is a play also about marriage, but from very much the vantage point of someone much closer to my experience now as a person who turned 70 last year. And it's also a story of marriage, but from the point of view of late in life as opposed to middle life. And I assume that, you know, this captures things that I could not have imagined when I was a 45 year old writer, or whatever it was when I wrote that. I just think that the plays tend to reflect, tend to be sort of time capsules of the times in which they were created. So that's, that's sort of how I view it.
[23:15]
Jan Simpson
The play was such a success, it was extended many times, but it did transfer to Broadway. Is that something you wanted at the time or considered at the time?
[23:29]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I was, when I was coming up in the theater, I was never aiming for Broadway. I just didn't think in the terms of Broadway when I was writing. Well, you know, I guess I didn't see myself As a mainstream writer of that nature, what I aspired to was to be produced by Joe Papp. And I was produced by Joe Papp when I was 29 with my play Found a Peanut. And that for me was sort of the first arrival in my career as a playwright. So, you know, and when Dinner with Friends was produced, we cast an ensemble of solid New York actors, but not one of them was considered a star. And Even then, even 25 years ago, in order to move a play, you really needed names, you know, in the mercantile sense, and we didn't have that. And so I was content to have assembled this lovely quartet, this ensemble, and didn't imagine that it would be on Broadway. And frankly, nobody came to me to move it to Broadway, you know, so we did settle in. We had commercial producers from the very beginning in New York. Mitchell Maxwell was the producer, along with his sister and some other partners. And we settled into the Variety Arts Theater, the late lamented Variety Arts Theater. And we had an 18 month run, which was really just wonderful. And I think if we had attempted to move to Broadway, which again was never on the table with this configuration of the play, I think we would have struggled. I don't think the play would have had the life that it ended up having.
[25:27]
Jan Simpson
But you did have the experience of turning the play into a screenplay. What was that experience like for you?
[25:37]
Donald Margulies
Well, frankly, that was not a wonderful experience. The screenplay is my screenplay. But the realization of the script really just didn't. It didn't look the way I'd wanted it to look. I wanted something that was much less again, star driven, which is what the film became. But that was also part of the. The fun of it was to imagine it with Dennis quaid and Andy McDowells and sort of a pre stardom Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear. I mean, you know, a lovely group of actors and Norman Jewison directed it. But it just, you know, I guess I always imagined it the way I never imagined a Broadway production. I always imagined it sort of an independent looking film and not a studio picture, which is sort of my impression of it in this configuration on hbo. Look, I'm delighted that it was made. If people know the play only from the film, I urge them to read the play because I think the experience. And you have now seen the film and read and seen the play. I think you probably know what I'm referring to. It's just tonally they're very different to experiences.
[27:01]
Jan Simpson
One of the things that's interesting to me as I've done This series is looking at what happens to playwrights after they win the Pulitzer. And the experiences have been varied. You clearly have had a successful career after winning the prize, but did it have an effect on your writing, on your thinking about your work?
[27:33]
Donald Margulies
Well, you know, I ran into Frank D. Gilroy, who won the Pulitzer for the Subject Was Roses shortly after I won for Dinner With Friends. And Frank said to me, don't do what I did. He said, after I won the Pulitzer, I spent years trying to write a Pulitzer Prize winning play. He said, just write another fucking play. And that was the best advice that I received. And, you know, it's so earthy and fundamental. But it was wonderful to hear Frank give me that incredible wisdom that he had. He had experienced himself. He had to come to that conclusion. And so that was. That was a gift to get that, that benediction from Frank Gilroy.
[28:23]
Jan Simpson
Did it also help? Because it had come perhaps later in your career. You'd already written a number of successful plays, been a finalist. You'd already sort of been recognized.
[28:41]
Donald Margulies
Yes, I am grateful that I did not receive the prize with sight unseen in 1992, when I guess I was, what, 37 years old. It was a gift to be a finalist. It suggested that people are hearing me and taking me seriously. And I thought, wow, that's a wonderful acknowledgement. But I didn't have the burden of the prize itself. I really just had sort of the equivalent of the pat on the back and. And continue doing your good work. I'm truly grateful for that. I'm glad I didn't win a day. Robert Schenken won for the Kentucky Cycle.
[29:20]
Jan Simpson
Yes.
[29:21]
Donald Margulies
And with Collected Stories, it was, you know, I had a few years to write some more plays after the acknowledgement of the finalist status of Sight Unseen. So I was very grateful for that. So again, by the time Dinner With Friends came along, I did have a body of work. I was able to move forward. And with Frank Gilroy's advice, I think I simply tried to write good plays, not worry about prizes so much. But one thing, and I don't know if my colleagues, I'm sure they experience things like this, but when you win a prize like that, suddenly people are inviting you places that you had not been invited before, you know, to give talks, to give workshops. And that's very tantalizing. It's very seductive to be feted at various universities around the country. It's fun and it's not writing. And so I did that for a little while because I thought, well, I may as well enjoy this while it's here, you know, because it's all so ephemeral. And I did enjoy it. And, you know, I still enjoy it, although now I have sort of an emeritus status, I think more than, you know, it's a generation later, and I recognize that. But I did enjoy the. I did enjoy the aftermath. And, you know, I would jokingly say that the wonderful thing about winning a Pulitzer Prize is that now everything that I have written was written by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Right? And, you know, my late colleague Wendy Wasserstein said when she won, she said, well, now I know what the first line of my obituary is going to be. And of course, it was the first line of her obituary, and it will probably be the first line of all of us who have been handed that title in our day.
[31:18]
Jan Simpson
Well, it puts you in this canon of dramatic literature that will live on. And so we have to be grateful to those of you who have produced this work that we will, you know, just always have. And I also want to thank you for taking time to look back and talk to us about Dinner with Friends.
[31:48]
Donald Margulies
Well, it was a pleasure to talk to you, Jan. Good luck with your projects.
[31:52]
Jan Simpson
Thank you. Thank you again, and thank you for listening. I hope you'll come back next time. And if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please send them to me@janbruddleidradio.com from the Cascades to PDX to your kitchen, we recycle like we live here. That's why governments, brands, and recycling companies are all joining together to bring change, to make recycling better. As in trusting that your recyclables end up in the right places to be made into new things and having brands help fund the cost of recycling. You can find the Latest updates@recycleon.org Oregon. From Mount Hood to the bin under your desk, together we can do this.