Photo by Nile Scott Studios
Presented by Greater Boston Stage Company
By Christina Baldwin, Sun Mee Chomet, and Jim Lichtscheidl
Directed by Weylin Symes
Music direction by Tim Goss
Featuring Paul Melendy and Debra Wise
Violin: Tommaso Lorenson
November 1 – 17, 2024
395 Main Street
Stoneham, MA 02180
Online playbill
Critique by Kitty Drexel
STONEHAM, Mass. — Greater Boston Stage Company’s Dinner For One is a short but charming play about a grieving grand dame and her affectionate butler. It has expanded moments of prop work, physical comedy, unsettling puns and a broad range of accents. It’s a silly treat to dislodge the election panic curdling your stomach this presidential cycle. It runs in Stoneham through November 17.
In Dinner For One, we watch sympathetic butler James (Paul Melendy*) perform an evening of legendary table service for Miss Sophie (Debra Wise). You see, Miss Sophie has loved and lost four romantic companions and one dear pet cat. In her glamorous eccentricity, she won’t do without them on her New Year’s birthday. It is up to James and only James, for reasons unbeknownst to us, to recreate Miss Sophie’s New Year’s birthday celebrational toasts, speeches, dances, gifts and precious feline behaviors. Join Miss Sophie, James and their imaginary guests party with pratfalls and enough brandy to drown a walk-in freezer of kitchen staff. Their antics are accompanied by piano and violin incidental music.
This play is a brisk 70 minutes long. In those 70 minutes, Melendy and Wise packed the play with laughs. One source of those laughs was a little, white slip of paper audience members were handed by ushers upon entering the theatre. On which, attendees were asked for information such as the title of their memoirs and the name of a sea creature. Our answers informed improvisational moments of the play. It was like Mad Libs: Live theatre edition.
At certain points during the play, Melendy and Wise fished out a slip at random out of the bowl used to collect them by a trusted volunteer just before the play. Sometimes the slip had a favorable suggestion for our actors. Sometimes, the suggestion on the slip was so unfavorable Melendy and Wise hilariously broke character to tell us the answers were unsuitable. That’s the glory and drawback of live theatre; you never know what you’re going to get.
Wise is as still as Melendy is chaotic. The role of James has Melendy running, tumbling and circling across the stage like a whirling dervish. His energy is infallible and his comedic timing is impeccable. Wise as Miss Sophie is James’ foil. He is at her beck and call, and Miss Sophie becks and calls to beat the band.
Wise’s comedic timing complements Melendy’s. While Melendy executes the hilarity, Wise dependably sets up the scenario without cracking too many smiles. It’s a very silly play after all and we can’t expect our actors to keep a straight face when the play is so lovingly performed.
Kudos to Mariah Ruben, assistant stage manager, for their work as the disembodied white gloves clearing the dining room end table. They had great timing and flare for a pair of hands reduced to cleaning up after a madcap evening of playing pretend. It’s giving tamed Thing from The Adam’s Family energy.
Scenic designer Katy Monthei and props master Hazel Peters did a bang-up job in this show. The set dressings are old fashioned but not battered. The props match the set. A lesser team might overwhelm their cast with excessive details. Monthei and Peters balanced their designs with the script’s needs just right.
This is an unconventional love story between an employer and an employee. There’s going above and beyond and then there’s Dinner For One’s James who commits to the bit with the devotion of a man securely in love. Miss Sophie doesn’t take James for granted, but not even Croesus could pay for service like this. Friends, let James be your guiding light. As the TikTok saying goes, if he wanted to, he would.
Correction: This article previously misattributed the role of the white gloves. The correct person in the gloves/behind the stage is assistant stage manager Mariah Ruben.
*From Melendy’s speech during the 2024 Norton Awards: “moist.”
