Keisha McFerrin and Kevin Wilson play rambunctious birthday-party guests in A.R. Gurney’s ''The Dining Room.'' Courtesy photo

By Lauri Gray Eaton
Editor of the View

As the Thanksgiving holiday nears and our families and other loved ones arrive from ever-more-scattered sites, most of us will converge at a central site, perhaps a family member’s home. The homecoming will surely center around a large roasted bird, and, if we are lucky, the rites of the occasion will be observed in a pleasantly appointed dining room. (If we are luckier still, we will not be put at the children’s table.)

The dining room for centuries has stood as a symbol of all that is traditional, tried and true – the fulcrum over which a family balances. It is this role to which A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room” pays homage.

The grace and gravitas of the room, a stereotypical standard in the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) domicile, is central to the play, which is currently approaching the last weekend of its run at the Boerne Community Theatre. The weight of the room’s importance in bringing structure and routine to a household is certainly felt in many of the vignettes that comprise the production, and the sadness of its passing as a de rigeur space in many modern homes is evident in others, yet the play maintains a comedic touch with an occasional hint of the risqué.

“The Dining Room” is not comprised of a single plotline but of many scenes taking place in dining rooms over the decades from the ’30s to the present. It is a tribute to the cast assembled by Director Christine Godin that the revolving doorful of characters does not miss a beat as each enters and exits the stage and returns again in a different role bearing not only new demeanors but shape-shifting in age and station.

The competent cast includes BCT stalwart Keisha McFerrin, Christopher Dean, Lisa Hart, Linda McCullers and Kevin Wilson. The latter is new to the Boerne stage but clearly not to theater. While each of the cast members was convincing in their kaleidoscope of characters, Wilson managed to stand out by evoking characters ranging from patriarchal to pubescent to puerile – and the latter can be a challenge when you’re sporting a goatee.