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| Martin Shakar, Lois Smith, Brooks Morton, Jerome Dempsey, Jacqueline Brookes, Patrick Mcvey (seated). (Photo: Martha Holmes.) |
A Midwestern family
sits down to its Sunday ritual of eating dinner after visiting the grave of
their late matriarch. A strange, blind census taker (Patrick McVey) intrudes
upon the scene and gradually makes each squirm as their personal guilt is drawn
out. Eventually, he is ejected (although he may well be their long absent
father), and his place is taken by one of the sons.
This play by prolific
novelist Joyce Carol Oates was turned down by all the critics. As Richard Watts
phrased it, Sunday Dinner was
pretentious, studiously obscure, and ponderous.” Few were able to grasp the
author’s point, and most felt there was nothing but a vacuum at its core. Clive
Barnes thought it an allegory of sorts with murky, symbolic trappings. Walter Kerr
was put off by its qualities of self-indulgence. Martin Gottfried knocked it
for being “awkwardly and insincerely written” in the vein of Harold Pinter.
Few quarrels were
picked with the acting or directing. As John Simon noted, they “seem to know how it is done even if they don’t know what it is they are doing.”
The rather
distinguished cast included Jacqueline Brookes, Lois Smith, Brooks Morton,
Jerome Dempsey, and Martin Shakar.
Next up: Sunset
