Bas Bleu Theatre serves up a strong production of a Pulitzer-Prize winning script in its presentation of Dinner with Friends.

A marriage falls apart and sends the couples’ best friends into crisis in Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer-Prize winning play. With just four actors and limited props and scenery, Dinner with Friends dives into the minds of its characters through scenes of intense and probing conversation.

The play begins at a kitchen table where Karen (Staci York) and Gabe (Bryan Hill) are regaling a bored and preoccupied Beth (Rachel Darden) with tales of their recent trip to Italy. Beth eventually breaks down and explains that her husband, Tom (Zack Taylor), has left her. What’s more, he had been cheating on her with another woman.

The rest of the play revolves around this revelation. Tom and Beth’s issues, however, take a back seat to Gabe and Karen’s reaction to them. They are angry with their friends and feel deeply betrayed by them. It is as if Tom’s and, later, Beth’s ability to happily move on from their marriage repudiates the value of Gabe and Karen’s work to keep theirs together.

The action of this story is limited almost entirely to dialogue. The tale itself is simple: A man cheats on his wife and leaves his family, upsetting his wife and their friends. The intelligent dialogue, though, serves to illuminate the characters as fully realized individuals. They are not stock characters, but complex human beings. Though generally a rather somber play, there is humor sprinkled throughout.

The actors at Bas Bleu delivered convincing, emotionally honest performances. Hill does an excellent job of capturing Gabe’s confusion over the breakdown of his friends’ marriage and brings his grief over realizing he no longer loves Tom to life with heartbreaking authenticity. Darden offers viewers a complex character who is not a simple victim or a simple villain, but a complicated person who has been hurt and who has hurt.

York brings some levity to the show, particularly in the first scene where she bickers with Gabe over the details of their trip to Italy, and, later, when Beth is telling her about her new boyfriend. Taylor portrays Tom convincingly and is at his best in the scene where he passionately argues with Beth, only to begin kissing her with the same passion an instant later.

The set design is fairly simple, typically consisting of a table or some chairs where the characters would sit and talk, with a few pieces of background decor to help to clarify the setting. One weak spot in the production was the lack of a set for an outdoor scene, which was instead played sitting on the floor of Gabe and Karen’s house.

For the most part, the simplicity of the set worked well, as the emphasis of the play was on the actors and their dialogue. The scenes were all well-lighted and the sound was clear.

The costumes fit their characters well. In particular, they helped to highlight the youth of the characters in a flashback scene.

Nothing extraordinary occurs in Dinner with Friends. An average couple breaks up in an ordinary way. And yet it packs a powerful emotional punch through its careful observation of the pain, loneliness, humor, love and joy that make up a life. Despite the fact that the script is over 20 years old, its exploration of these timeless themes make it just as relevant to viewers today as it was when it first came out.