Roundabout Will Produce Broadway Revivals of Dinner With Friends and The Real Thing

By Adam Hetrick
04 Mar 2013

Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies
Photo by Monica Simoes

The Roundabout Theatre Company will produce revivals of Donald Margulies' Dinner with Friends and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing as part of its 2013-14 Broadway season. They join the previously announced return of Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews.

Tony Award nominee Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) will stage the Broadway premiere of Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning 1999 play Dinner With Friends.

According to the Roundabout, "Ever since blissfully married Karen and Gabe played matchmaker with their friends Beth and Tom, the two couples have been inseparable—going to the Vineyard every summer, raising their kids and enjoying countless dinners together. But when one marriage unexpectedly crumbles, the couples' lives begin to veer in opposite directions. Can these four friends move on to the next chapter without moving apart... or have they changed beyond recognition? Wryly funny and richly layered, Dinner With Friends is a modern masterpiece about the path you choose, the millions you don't and the detours that make it worth the ride."

Sam Gold (The Flick, Seminar) will stage Stoppard's 1982 drama The Real Thing, which will return for its third Broadway production. It earned a Tony Award for its 1984 Broadway debut.

"In The Real Thing, Henry is a playwright not so happily married to Charlotte, the lead actress in his play about a marriage on the verge of collapse," the Roundabout states. "When Henry's affair with their friend Annie threatens to destroy his own marriage, he discovers that life has started imitating art. When Annie leaves her husband so she and Henry can begin a new life together, he can only wonder: is their love the real thing? Delectably witty and deeply affecting, The Real Thing takes a daring glimpse at relationships, fidelity, and the passions that often blur our perception of love."

Casting and dates of production for Dinner With Friends and The Real Thing have not been announced.

As previously reported, Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon's popular comedy that appeared in an extended run in the 62-seat Black Box Theatre in the Roundabout Underground series in fall 2012, will move upstairs this fall, to the larger Laura Pels Theatre with its original cast. Daniel Aukin (4000 miles) directs the comedy. Click here to read more about Bad Jews.

For more information, visit roundabouttheatre.org.