The walls, floor and ceiling are all painted black. Black chairs surround three sides of the stage. In the middle is a dinner table with six empty chairs, waiting to be occupied by three divorced couples. Amidst these shadows, a dysfunctional group of unhappy divorcees will viciously and humorously try to rinse the blackness from their pasts.

The Black Box Players of Syracuse University’s drama department present ‘The Dinner Party,’ a play by Neil Simon. It previews tonight at 8 p.m. at the Black Box Theatre in Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St. It will run through Oct. 4. Admission is free, but seating is limited.

In the play, three divorced couples receive invitations to a dinner party at a ritzy restaurant in France. Although the invitations were supposedly sent by their divorce lawyer, he never shows up and it becomes a mystery as to who planned the dinner and why. In the process of figuring it out, the characters get personal and emotional, engaging in vicious fights – and some suggestive acts on the dinner table.

‘It has a ‘Clue’ quality to it,’ said Greg Cicchino, the director and a senior acting major. ‘You’re wondering who sent the invitation and why they’re there. Meanwhile, the divorced couples are arriving and slowly meeting and figuring it out.’

Although the play was originally set in the 1980s, Cicchino changed it to 1959 to encompass the glamour of the golden age in Europe. The play pokes fun at the aristocrats, who appear to be perfect, but end up with terrible marriages.

Despite being a Neil Simon play, ‘The Dinner Party’ avoids the laugh-out-loud humor of some of his other works like ‘The Odd Couple.’ Instead, it relies on dark comedy that often employs sarcasm and irony.

‘Black Box has a history in the past couple of years of doing emotionally raping shows,’ Cicchino said. ‘You leave feeling very depressed. This show can be sort of depressing as well. It’s not shock theater but it has shock value simply because you don’t expect something Neil Simon to have real, touching, emotional depth.’

The size of the Black Box Theatre – roughly four open doubles – provides a personal feel and allows the audience to become engaged in the action. The first row of chairs is so close to the action that actors have to be careful about tripping over someone’s foot, said Michael Penna, a junior musical theater major.

The intimacy of the theater greatly adds to the lesson of ‘The Dinner Party.’

‘The play itself is a really accurate portrait of what can happen when people just don’t communicate with one another,’ said Allison Reed, a senior acting major. ‘And how a silly mistake that you don’t even realize you’re making can cause you to completely destroy somebody else’s life along with your own.’

It deals with issues of miscommunication and the irreparable damages they cause in a relationship. All three couples suffer from such maladies.

‘It’s a classic example of laughing at other people’s pain, because these people are incredibly, incredibly unhappy people,’ Reed said. ‘And they do the general self-defense mechanisms of insulting the other person or trying to bring the other person down or doing anything to make themselves hurt a little bit less. And it seems very funny, but everything is funny because these people are so unhappy.’

Reed plays Yvonne, who has married and divorced her ex-husband twice. When Yvonne first shows up at the dinner party, she is terrified and turns to leave. She sees Albert and decides to take the opportunity to confront him about why he drives her nuts – and why she loves him.

‘[The play] relates to all of us in terms of the raw humanity of it,’ Reed said. ‘A lot of selfishness and pettiness can make you forget that you do need that human connection with somebody. And even though it’s not going to go easy and not everything is going to go your way, it doesn’t mean it’s not right to be with them – and I think that is something we all could learn.’

Published on September 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm