Edgar Doctorow - Drinks Before Dinner

A final note: I have no compunction in saying that the last line of the play seems deliverable by either Claudette or Edgar, depending on the director’s point of view. The text here has Claudette speaking the last line. This would suggest the solace of shared perception, the acceptance of Edgar by the others of the party, the only consolation of his sacrifice. The variant, in which Edgar reads the last line (as was done in the original production), dispenses with this consolation, Edgar using the line to carry his despair to a form of sardonic illumination in which even the newly opened eyes of the others is seen to be useless. And now, you’re going to say it, he tells Claudette, in effect, and everything will go on and everything I’ve done here tonight will have resulted in nothing, changed nothing, except that I have given my life for a small episode between drinks and dinner.

But I like the ending as printed. We’re on the ark, after all, and have been for some time.

E. L. D.

Drinks Before Dinner was first presented by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Public/Newman Theater in New York City on November 22, 1978, with the following cast:

EDGAR Christopher Plummer

JOAN Zohra Lampert

JOEL Charles Kimbrough

CLAUDETTE Barbara eda-Young

MICHAEL James Naughton

ANDREA Maria Tucci

GRACE Virginia Vestoff

ALAN Josef Sommer

BOY John Kimbrough

GIRL Carrie Horner

MAID/HOUSEKEEPER Fiona Hale

Directed by Mike Nichols

Designed by Tony Walton

Lighting designed by Jennifer Tipton

Make-up designed by Way Bandy

EDGAR, married to

JOAN

MICHAEL, married to

ANDREA

JOEL, married to

CLAUDETTE

GRACE

ALAN (the guest of honor)

BOY, aged ten, son of Joel and Claudette

GIRL, aged eight, daughter of Joel and Claudette

MAID/HOUSEKEEPER

The action takes place in the

modern, well-appointed sitting

room of a New York City

apartment. Big window upstage with a view

of the skyline at night.

Three couples are having drinks.

The couples are

EDGAR and JOAN

MICHAEL and ANDREA

JOEL and CLAUDETTE (the host and hostess)

also onstage are a maid/housekeeper and two children

Later in this scene another guest, GRACE, will join the party

( At curtain: the preliminary stage of a dinner party when the host and hostess , JOEL and CLAUDETTE, present their children to the guests. There are two children, a BOY and GIRL, ten and eight, in night clothes .)

EDGAR I won’t survive this evening.

JOAN Don’t be that way. They’re lovely. Their parents are right to show them off.

( The children are kissed by everyone and led off by the MAID. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres are served )

EDGAR Forgive me, but let’s not have the evening we all expect to have. I won’t survive it. The children are beautiful but we would say so even if they were not. It’s one of the things we say. We all know what we say. We say of artists that we like them or that we don’t like them. We say of servants that they are difficult. We say of the hors d’oeuvres that we are on a diet. We say of the market that it is depressed. We say of a couple splitting it’s amazing it lasted as long as it did. And the hostess knows if her party is to be a success she must have someone of whom everyone has heard. And the guests form their opinions of the person of whom everyone has heard. And we all come away with a story for the next dinner party where we will all know what we say and meet someone of whom everyone has heard.

JOAN And so, dear friends, adieu. It’s been a lovely evening.

CLAUDETTE But that barely begins to suggest the interest of a dinner party. He assumes conversation is limited to what is said. You haven’t mentioned the subtle and engrossing judgments we make of each other as we talk. The exquisite, discreet flirtations with which we entertain one another as we talk.

JOEL And what about drinking? He’s left that out too.

CLAUDETTE You’re a hard man, Edgar. Yes, someone is coming to my party of whom everyone has heard. I’m having someone the whole world knows! What am I to do? I was looking forward to my evening. I thought it would be memorable. What would you like it to be?

EDGAR I don’t know. Memorable. Yes, for God’s sake, let it be memorable. Because something peculiar is going on, and I don’t know what it is. Nothing interests me. The things I’ve always done no longer seem worth doing. Whatever it was I believed is not worth believing. You’re all friends of enormous charm and glamour, but I can’t believe you still believe in the lives we lead. It’s very odd. Everything seems to me as tiresome as everything else. Nothing seems to be unquestionably worth doing. We are bored by everything and believe nothing, but we’re all going along on momentum, believing in what we did and believed in before because we don’t know what else to do.

JOAN Edgar, if you were not feeling social, you should have excused yourself from the evening. We should not have come. That is the way to handle this sort of thing. There are appropriate occasions for the expression of dark despair, but this is not one of them.

EDGAR I want to speak of something that matters. Why is that unsocial? Because you’re invited to dinner, must you abandon your mind?

CLAUDETTE Actually, I rather like this tack. I rather like it.

EDGAR I’m sure I can’t be the only one to feel this way. It amazes me how little I have to do in order to survive. It’s astonishing what little investment of care or attention secures for me the right to live another day, and secures it in some comfort. I have to wonder if others do as little as I do. Do you care as little as I care? How has this happened? How do we get away with it?

ANDREA I recognize that feeling. I think secretly everyone knows more than I know and is more competent in everything than I am. I feel if everyone knew how little I do, I would be sent away. You know, as children are from games: You can’t play. I’m waiting to be told I can’t play.

JOEL Well, Andrea, I would never tell someone as lovely as you that she couldn’t play, And I don’t share Edgar’s malaise. I like what I do and I think it’s useful. Doctors are coming in for criticism these days, much of it justified. We’re not perfect. But I like what I do and I think I do it well. I’m happy to be in a society that allows me to do something useful, and to be paid well for doing it.

EDGAR The point is, Joel, whose resources are maintaining us, I with my malaise and you with your smug self-satisfaction? Someone still has energy, but who? Not you. Not I. I see in my friends’ eyes feelings similar to my feelings. Is it our age? We have no more lust for our wives and no more attention for each other. We have no more lust for each other’s wives! We think of the young women who are available to us as pockets of desire and ignorance, as repetitions, we think of passion as repetition, and of passionate young women as repetitions of other passionate young women. Suppose someone were to walk in right now and I were immediately to fall in love. A little time sets everything right. If you smell the sweet hair of a young girl, it’s the scent of her shampoo. Very soon there are small defections from the thrall of love. She is reading the morning newspaper before you’re out the door. She says something about a failing or fault of yours, not in criticism, but as someone who occupies your flaw or failing as you yourself do. One evening you have an intense discussion about the future. She turns out to plan ahead, like your wife. One day you see they have separately bought the same dress. They have separately chosen the same scarf and separately want to know if you like it.