If you're looking to sit passively in a theater and walk out the same way you came in, "Dinner with Friends" isn't the show for you.  With its simplicity and honesty, this Pulitzer Prize-winning play inspires change.

The Roundabout Theatre Company deserves a round of applause for this smashing comedy, which features some of the best actors in New York, a writer who knows a thing or two about relationships, and a director who serves it all up as the very best meal. Written by Donald Margulies and directed by Tony-winner Pam MacKinnon, it tells the story of two couples living in suburban Connecticut.  Karen (Marin Hinkle) and Gabe (Jeremy Shamos) are happily married, and life is great; their best friends Beth and Tom (Heather Burns and Darren Pettie) are also married and they get to take partnered trips together to Martha's Vineyard, watch their kids grow up with one another and hopefully grow old together. It seems like the perfect life, but we soon discover that one of these happy couples is not so content.

In the kitchen of Gabe and Karen -- a chef's paradise -- a solo Beth spills the news of her separation with Tom during dessert.  At this point, we've yet to meet Tom, so Heather Burns breakdown as the troubled Beth puts you on her side.  As the play continues, Tom and Beth fight to 'win' their friends.  The fact that it's this battle that the play focuses on -- rather than, for example, the house or the kids -- makes "Dinner With Friends" stand out.

It's not only the romantic relationships that we (and the characters) experience deeply, but also the lost friendships.  MacKinnon moves us through time effortlessly as we experience the rise and fall of these relationships; each partnership has a dance. At the start of Act Two, Margulies takes you back twelve years later to the beginning of what is destined disaster between Tom and Beth.  Here, this team creates pure theatrical magic. Each actor sheds their years both in body language and with the help of Charles G. LaPointe (Hair and Wig Design), who makes the bald spots disappear.  Jane Cox's lighting design also deserves praise, as does Allen Moyer's set design, which with its detailed environments is able to set the tone of each scene before a single word is uttered.

"Dinner with Friends" is tasteful and fulfilling. A true delight in American theater, it's a show exploring the nature of human relationships that you can talk about over dinner for hours.