Psychological Drama/Political Thriller • 1 Female, 1 Male • Playlet • ~10 Mins
Pairs well with Old Money
Pairs well with Old Money
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Synopsis
On the eve of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, ambitious U.S. Circuit Judge Edwin Spratt and his wife Abigail share a tense, increasingly surreal dinner in their Bethesda home, where polite exchanges curdle into barbed interrogations and memory itself begins to fray. As allegations of sexual assault threaten Edwin’s ascension, Abigail probes his late-night “walks,” his evasions, and the truth behind a decades-old accusation in which his face, not just his name, has become synonymous with a woman’s trauma. While a ticking grandfather clock underscores their unraveling, the couple spar over love, loyalty, ambition, and the cost of power, revealing a marriage built on denial, performance, and strategic silence. In this taut two-hander, what begins as a quiet marital dinner becomes a chilling reckoning with complicity, reputation, and the corrosive passage of time.
Inspiration Set
Playwright Note
Dinner Dance began with a question: what happens in private before the cameras turn on? On the eve of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, a marriage becomes its own tribunal as a dining room turns courtroom, love becomes testimony, and memory proves unreliable. Against a cultural backdrop where public hearings blur into performance with rehearsed outrage, staged loyalty, and truth parsed into technicalities, the play looks past spectacle to the private negotiations that precede it. Edwin and Abigail are not portraits of specific figures, but they inhabit a moment shaped by televised reckonings and partisan fracture. The play is less concerned with guilt or innocence than with complicity, asking what ambition requires, what loyalty permits, and what silence protects and costs. The ticking clock functions as history itself, steady, indifferent, and impossible to silence, recording what institutions and reputations attempt to fix or obscure. As Edwin pursues ascent at any price, Abigail understands the terms of the exchange, her presence, restraint, and even adornment becoming part of the defense. In a culture where power often outpaces accountability, Dinner Dance examines the intimate collateral damage: a marriage strained by denial, a truth negotiated behind closed doors, and the uneasy space between what is remembered and what is deliberately forgotten.
Production History
None to date.
Development History
DINNER DANCE received a public development reading in New York, New York on Wed, Apr 16th, 2025 as part of New Ambassadors Theatre Company's Play Development Lab. The cast featured Marie Eléna O'Brien as Abigail Spratt and Desmond Dutcher as Edwin Spratt.
Awards/Recognition
None to date.
Reviews/Recommendations
"Ooooh the DRAMA. This short two-hander is so juicy: politics, scandal, mysterious late night 'walks,' disintegrating memory, and a ticking grandfather clock underscoring it all. This is the play-equivalent of a dark and stormy night. I love how the audience figures out the situation more and more as the dialogue between this husband and wife goes along, instead of being spoon-fed exposition. What an engaging ten minutes."
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REMINDER: No presentation or production of DINNER DANCE, in whole or in part, is allowed unless permission is granted by the playwright or his designated agents.