The Dinner Party

Writer Tony Grounds in on familiar territory in 'The Dinner Party': the stomping grounds of the working class made good. In just one hour, he compactly tells a story in which years of tensions between a pair of couples reach boiling point, and with fine performances from a strong cast, there's a blackly hilarious conclusion to the tale. It is, however, a bit heavy handed, one almost feels that these characters should be minor figures in someone else's drama: in fact, he does introduce a third, relatively normal, couple to the plot, but the heart of the story lies elsewhere and you can't help but feeling that all the central parties basically get what they deserve. Hence one watches as something of a distant spectator; but it's still a fine show.

One could sum up this hour-long TV play as "Death Of A Salesman meets Six Chavs In Search Of A Fortune with a dash of Romeo and Juliet". The theme: meltdown of two marriages during one evening at a new house in the expensive street for the vulgar nouveaux riches of a garish new housing attached to what the characters refer to as a village.

Amusing? slightly. Any comedy is very dark, though not actually grim: the only deaths is those of the respect of others for the four main older characters and the happiness of those same four. Satirical? in a way; the whole is a bitter commentary on the people whose entire world is that of money, the acquisition of real estate, and obsession with imagined status as represented by cash, and with Keeping Up Appearances. The young couple are somewhat less dislikeable than the main four people; we don't really find out much about them, except his job. If one is generous of spirit, one feels only sorry for the four; if not, one feels mainly disgust. I watched till the end mainly to see how it ended.