From Stage to Screen, a Peek Into Marriage

Modest, yes. But “Dinner With Friends” deserved all the awards and success that came playwright Donald Margulies’ way. Writing about four longtime friendships among two married couples, and the unexpected effects of one couple’s divorce, Margulies addressed matters of loyalty, trust and the fault lines running beneath any relationship lasting longer than a long weekend.

“Marriages all go through a kind of baseline wretchedness from time to time.” So says Dennis Quaid, working hard against his usual rugged-individualist typecasting in the role of Gabe, the befuddled food writer he plays in the HBO version.

Gabe’s wife and writing partner, Karen, is portrayed by Andie MacDowell. She’s an actress perpetually at war with her modeling instincts; just when she pings one line of dialogue nicely, she’ll turn around and go straight for the obvious surface emotion in the next. The material here isn’t especially difficult. But “Dinner With Friends,” for which Margulies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in drama, requires a light touch, even in its heavier emotional bouts.

So what would it have taken to make director Norman Jewison’s version, with a script by Margulies, a really good adaptation instead of a fair one?

For one thing, how about Quaid switching roles with Greg Kinnear? The latter does very well by lawyer Tom, married to sometime-artist Beth, played in high twitch by the excellent Toni Collette. Early on in the teleplay (as in the play), over a first-rate meal of lamb risotto, Beth tells her best friends Gabe and Karen that Tom has left her for another woman. The news stuns her friends.

As the months pass, Gabe and Karen are surprised to see how well Tom and Beth come through their breakup--for the better, in fact. Sympathies shift continually, cleverly. Gabe and Karen remain committed, but they’re shaken up a little.

Jewison has filmed plays before, often with middling results (“Agnes of God,” “Other People’s Money”). “Dinner With Friends” is a step up from that level. But it can’t hold a candle to HBO’s recent “Wit,” another filmed play. It’s softer than it was on stage. Margulies’ artfully balanced ending has been cheered up--rosy lovemaking instead of bittersweet, late-night fantods--and on the end credits, it’s none other than Quaid singing the standard “I’m in the Mood for Love.” (He sounds a bit like trumpeter Jack Sheldon.)

Quaid and MacDowell work at everything, hard, but Kinnear and Collette act as counterweights in different ways. Kinnear exerts not an ounce of unneeded effort. Collette, by contrast, makes Beth a far more flagrantly neurotic creation than she ever was on stage. (The ‘80s flashback scene, set in the Hamptons, is upstaged by Collette’s northbound Laurie Anderson hair.) Neither actor worries about our sympathy; they just dive into the material, intelligently. MacDowell and Quaid, too, muster some effective stuff in the later passages.

Dave Grusin’s musical score is at one with the general unevenness. We get a lovely little jazz theme on the opening credits, but then Grusin throws in jolly Italianate fills on top of dialogue concerning Italian food. At times like these, “Dinner With Friends” resembles a pilot for a series called “earlyfortysomething.” At other times, fleetingly, you see why the play transcended its own familiar subject matter.

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“Dinner With Friends” will be shown tonight at 9 on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA-L (mature audiences, with a special advisory for coarse language).