Next Act Theatre couldn’t have selected a better play to end their season and highlight Laura Gordon’s return to their stage than Dinner With The Duchess. And Laura Gordon is absolutely at the top of her game here. So, if like me, you have been waiting to see Gordon in front of the footlights again, this is the show you want to see.
We meet Margaret as she enters the stage from what we will later learn is the primary bedroom. The set is a small modern kitchen with a sleek island facing a contemporary dining room table surrounded by mid-century modern chairs and settee. She goes out to the balcony to have a cigarette and returns to answer the door. And she welcomes Helen into her home. Laura Gordon is Margaret and Mai Abe is Helen. They seem wary and unsure and both actors clearly represent that discomfort and maybe project just a bit of icy demeanor. We don’t know either character yet but the initial conversations seem to indicate it might be a generational thing since Helen is much younger than Margaret.
And now we meet our characters. Margaret is an accomplished violinist who has performed world wide and is retiring from her position as concert master from an unnamed and un-sited symphony orchestra. She is granting her last interview to Helen, a journalist who is hoping to make a name for herself via this interview. It isn’t an assignment but an idea she pitched to her editors. So the chill in the room is now apparent. Margaret wants to talk about the music and Helen the events in Margaret’s life and both want to define Margaret’s legacy. Abe is a consummate professional journalist. She exhibits the proper directness you’d expect in a journalist and is sure of her footing since she has done all of the necessary research into her subject. Gordon’s Margaret, for all of her accomplishments, is guarded and uneasy and insists they talk about the music. But she gives us the impression that she has something to hide. And maybe she hasn’t totally convinced herself that she is ready to retire?
And then the other shoe drops and the dynamics in the room change a bit a Margaret’s husband, David, arrives with take out Italian food from a restaurant from their fabled past but whose food they have come think of as bland. Andrew May plays David as a suave, flirty, mature presence but leans toward the sarcastic side. He insists on enhancing the meal before serving with his major contribution being lemon zest. And that is sort of a backdrop for his role too as David often interjects himself into the conversation…often providing background that Helen would relish but sometimes embarrassing himself or Margaret in the process.
May knows how to mutter under his breath effectively and just how to twist the knife effectively. And although both Margaret and David regale Helen with some very romantic stories from their life, there is a palpable undertone of hostility. Abe’s Helen can sense it and wonders how to react. I sensed that maybe Margaret and David were still together out of habit rather than the continuing love story that they defend. But the lemon zest in their life might just be a bit of seasoning ala Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? When their dueling finally comes to a head, David storms out of the room to the bedroom and slams the door. This is the pivot in the action. (small quibble: I found the door slam unsatisfying)
But that slam triggers Margaret and allows Gordon to launch into an elegant tell all soliloquy. Playwright Nick Green has put together an amazing stream of consciousness script here, an absolutely engaging precise bit of language, that finally answers all of the questions that Helen has raised during the course of the evening. Gordon just takes hold of this speech and unravels it as if it were her own life and experience that she is describing. I just sat there enthralled, trying to take it in. When she finishes Helen doesn’t know what to do and the distance between the two women doesn’t seem to have narrowed. Margaret starts to play a recording of her signature performance and Helen leaves.
When the music’s over, turn out the lights.
Mai Abe is making her Milwaukee debut and Andrew May is making his Next Act debut. I want to thank director Samantha Martinson for bringing them together with Laura Gordon for Dinner With The Duchess. Such a delightful and perfectly balanced cast. I hope we see Abe and May again soon.
Dinner With The Duchess runs at Next Act Theatre from now through May 17, 2026 at their theater at 255 South Water Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Additional information and tickets here.
P.S. A question for Nick Green: Given there was a movie with a dinner theme some time ago, was it intentional or a coincidence that the unseen but oft mentioned symphony conductor is named Andre?