About the Play:

Drinks Before Dinner has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

Drinks Before Dinner is a full-length drama by E.L. Doctorow. It takes place in an elegant urban apartment. Seven people are gathered for an ultra-chic dinner party. During the course of the evening, a guest shatters the friendly banter. It becomes something nobody expected it to be. Drinks Before Dinner is a play by one of America's most eminent writers.

Drinks Before Dinner takes place in a fashionable New York City apartment where three wealthy couples and a single woman are gathered for a dinner party. The are having cocktails while they wait for the arrival of the guest of honour, the Secretary of State. They discuss their economically privileged lives that have no meaning and little pleasure. Worse, they say, they have long been aware of this emptiness and have done nothing to bring interest or meaning into their lives. Tonight, however, will be different. One of the guests, a middle-aged man named Edgar is gripped by despair and racial anxiety as he talks about the end of the world. He pours out his vision to the other guests – a vision of moral erosion, technological excess, the decline of passion, and the dehumanization of self in a world where "celebrities hold the proxies for our identity". The other guests are taken aback by Edgar's spiel but are entertained by his eloquence, even agree with much of it. Then the outraged Edgar pulls out a gun as the celebrated Secretary of State, Alan, arrives, having left his bodyguards down in the car. Alan, a Kissinger-like winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is just as gloomy. As the pair reach a tongue-blistering stalemate, the terrified guests are hostages to Edgar's desperate attempt to find some resolution to his unbearable agony. As the hostess puts it, "You've hijacked the living room." But they need not be too scared or too hopeful. Soon, Edgar puts his gun away, the Secretary leaves, and the couples go to dinner. Nothing has changed. Drinks Before Dinner is a tour-de-force of language and ideas concerning the individual's role in and response to contemporary America.

Drinks Before Dinner was first performed in 1978 at the Newman Theater of Joseph Papp's Public Theater Complex of the New York Shakespeare Festival in Manhattan. It was staged by Mike Nichols (one of the few times he associated himself with an off-Broadway production) with Christopher Plummer in the lead role of Edgar. The play has been performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 6 female, 5 male

What people say:

"...witty and provocative...." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (1931-2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor. Considered one of the major authors of the 20th century, he enjoyed critical and popular success over his 50-year career. He won the National Book Award for fiction in 1986 for World's Fair and the National Book Critics Circle award in 1989 for Billy Bathgate and in 2005 for The March. Besides his 10 novels, he published two books of short stories, a play called Drinks Before Dinner and numerous essays and articles.