In Asolo Rep’s five-year exploration of the American character, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner visits an historical moment. In 1967, as director Frank Galati points out, the composition of the American family around its dinner table is on its way to change. To the typical Asolo audience, the titular question is posed and — in a way beyond the film that first asked it — is also answered. Dinner will be served in a home of understated elegance on a slope overlooking San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. Joanna Drayton, just in from Hawaii where she met and fell in love with distinguished medical researcher Dr. John Prentice, awaits his arrival. She’ll announce their intended marriage to her mom Christina, an art gallery owner, and her liberal newspaper publisher dad Matt. Surprise! Dr. Prentice is African-American! The racial implications of Joanna and Dr. John wedding in the U.S. at the time have convinced him they need her parents’ blessing. Will the evening end up with it or will a denial end their plan to marry? Does the answer presage how Americans of different generations, races, and social and economic status will deal with change? On opening night, at the end of the performance of Dinner, an affluent-looking 70ish man stood up near me and, arms raised, bellowed: “The Asolo actors are wonderful!” Certainly, Peggy Roeder in a quiet, thoughtful, loving way as Christina Drayton centers everyone’s concern about her daughter. Mark Jacoby, as her husband Matt and major hold-out of agreement to the interracial marriage, represents tough thinking over emotion, while Ernest Perry as retired postman John Prentice, Sr. unites both, crying out with a strong voice of experience. His wife, portrayed knowingly by Tyla Abercrumbie, contributes her short but very significant point of view. Ally Farzetta’s enthusiastic Joanna and A. K. Murtadha’s smart, expressive Dr. John Prentice form an ideal couple to face their unfortunately difficult dilemma. Jacqueline Williams as the Drayton maid Tillie characterizes Black attitudes of her generation, experience, and status, while Denise Cormier as the assistant in Christina’s art gallery sums up the scrutiny her daughter and Dr. John will endure in addition to glossed over prejudice. As Monsignor Ryan, the Draytons’ priest and friend, William Dick personalizes a stereotype and contributes potent ethical observations, softened by humor. A garden at the off-proscenium bottom of a three-tiered set allows for telling moments away from the group dynamics on the central main stage — a nice touch. The scene outside the window of the top-level dining room could use some distancing of the Bay Bridge, so the house won’t seem to be on a slippery slope to its side. Lighting helps to separate the levels well, and sound recalls that used in the film from which this play is adapted. Costumes are appropriate to the characters and the period, though Joanna could use a change for the evening. Frank Galati has obviously directed Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner to relate to today with its problems of polarization, especially affecting races. I’m not sure, though, that it relates as well as a contemporary play, particularly by a non-white or a mixed-race writer, would. This one leaves the racial aspects of the development of the American character at the end of the 1960s.
