ROOM FOR SECONDS PLAYWRIGHT MINDS HIS TABLE MANNERS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

A play like ``Dinner With Friends'' is an argument for creating a theater district with easy walking proximity between playhouses, bars, restaurants and coffeehouses. It's a play that begs for an early curtain (7:30 p.m. at the Geffen Playhouse, thank you very much) allowing audience members to find a comfortable spot for post-play dissection before the evening is too far gone. ``Dinner With Friends'' can even make a construction snarl on the north 405 back to the Valley somewhat bearable. (Who said that? Get me a straitjacket!)

Donald Margulies' honored and much-produced play on the rise and fall of coupledom, needs - begs even - to be talked about. See it with your significant other, certainly, but also with any friends - single or paired - who you plan to know for a long time.

Any decent production should get you thinking, and Daniel Sullivan's staging at the Geffen is better than decent. The bulk of his four-person cast seems to understand the play's structure and rhythms as well as the director does. That's a good thing because, its Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding, ``Dinner With Friends'' pivots around an idea more than it does around character development. But with folks like Dana Delany and Daniel Stern giving them life, you can often overlook the fact that, in this play, Gabe, Karen, Tom and Beth don't have much of an existence outside of how they function as couples. That's part of the playwright's point.

Expect to grit your teeth through the cloying expository opening scene. A pair of 40something food writers, Gabe and Karen (played by Stern and Rita Wilson) prepare a meal for their dear friend Beth (Delany), all the while recounting the mostly culinary highlights of their latest trip to Italy. We're in upper-middle-class utopia here in Gabe and Karen's all-purpose kitchen, the first of a series of dead-on locales created by set designer Neil Patel. When they're not handing out place mats bought in Sienna, they're bantering cutely with off-stage children. Very cozy. Very I-am-WASP,-see-me-mince.

Then Beth drops a bomb. The reason her husband, Tom, the final corner of this foursome, isn't present is because he's ended the marriage. Beth's choice of detail makes the absent Tom (Kevin Kilner, charismatic even in the midst of heavy self-absorption) into a home-wrecking jerk. It's a situation Tom - when he returns later that evening - is determined to rectify. Gabe and Karen are his oldest friends too, and he wants the opportunity to tell his side of things. If it's not too late.

But it kind of is. Karen is already in Beth's corner (although Wilson plays the humor of her character's judgmental nature rather than the bitterness), and Gabe doesn't know what to think. More accustomed to being the solid, fix-it couple, Gabe and Karen don't know what to make of a mess they can't clean up. Turns out Tom's not an outright heel and Beth is stronger than she looks, and they've both got issues with Gabe and Karen.

The opening of Act 2 takes us 12 years into the past, when Gabe and Karen introduced Tom to Beth during a Martha's Vineyard vacation. It's a revealing scene, sowing the seeds for Tom and Beth's union and for their breakup. Then it's back to the present where, in a pair of mirroring scenes, we see which strands of the friendship will continue, and which are dead. You want a well-constructed play? This one's a Mercedes.

The second act is Stern's opportunity to shine, and he does it expertly. The less flummoxed and more outraged Gabe becomes, the more we see that this play is about his quandary. The actor has a squeak to his voice that has served him well in comic movie roles. Thankfully, he's no doofus here.

Delany (frumped up initially in Jess Goldstein's costumes) is also quite good, taking Beth from being the over-emotional victim to someone who's going to land on her feet. Delany played Karen for three months in New York, but after watching her work at the Geffen, imagining her as someone other than Beth is no easy task.

But the star of the evening is Margulies, a playwright whose future work we'll be watching for a long time. ``Dinner With Friends'' - which will play all over the country as well as internationally - takes aim at a universally vulnerable area - the relationships we build and fight like hell to preserve.``

DINNER WITH FRIENDS''

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 29.

Tickets: $20 to $42. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Photo:

Kevin Kilner, bottom left, Rita Wilson, Daniel Stern and Dana Delany star in ``Dinner With Friends'' at the Geffen Playhouse.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer