I'm detecting a pattern here.

It began five years ago when I saw Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends at Sarasota's Florida Studio Theatre. As a Margulies fan — particularly of his plays The Model Apartment and Collected Stories — I had only the highest hopes when I sat down in the theater. But to my surprise, I found the play, about two marriages under pressure, short on insight and originality.

It was well written and impeccably acted and more or less interesting enough from moment to moment — but it had nothing but truisms to offer about love and marriage. I was disappointed and said so in my review.

Some months later, I had the chance to see the same play as a made-for-HBO movie, with Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell and Greg Kinnear among its stars. For some reason I thought the passage of time and change of cast (and director: Norman Jewison was in charge of this one) might alter my attitude. I even went so far as to record the show on videotape, thinking that I would show it to one of the playwriting classes I occasionally teach.

But the change meant essentially nothing: Better-known performers and a world-class director couldn't add depth to a play that was so insistently superficial. I was distinctly unimpressed. And to this day I haven't played back the tape for anyone.

Well, maybe the third time would be the charm. I went to St. Petersburg's American Stage the other day looking forward to seeing several of my favorite thespians — Colleen McDonnell, Julie Rowe and Christopher Swan — along with Todd Olson, the theater's artistic director, in yet another production of Dinner With Friends.

This time, I told myself, I'm going to understand why it won the Pulitzer. This time I'm going to see the true grandeur of the work, its overarching wisdom, its emotional heft. This time I'm going to finally know what I've been missing.

And what did I find? Same old story. Same limitations. Intelligent soap opera.

I think it's safe to say now that I'll never feel otherwise.

Which is not to suggest that the play is not entertaining. No, with this cast and Allen Lloyd's attractive sets, Dinner With Friends is a civilized, enjoyable, above all comfortable way to spend two hours. It's fun to make the acquaintance of Gabe and Karen, an upper-middle-class, happily married couple from Connecticut who are upset by the breakup of Beth and Tom, their best friends. It's interesting to hear both sides of the breakup story — Beth blames Tom and Tom blames Beth (who would have thought?) — and it's pleasant seeing a flashback of Beth and Tom's first meeting on Martha's Vineyard.

There's even a little suspense: Will Tom be happy with Nancy, his new amor, and will Beth ever find a replacement for Tom? And there's the pleasure of watching Gabe and Karen try to weather the stress all this places on their own relationship.

The problem is, all this enjoyment leads us nowhere we weren't already. The moral of it seems to be that long marriages lack the excitement of new infatuations. And there are two sides to every story. And don't rush to judgment. And when you do, don't judge a book by its cover. And several other platitudes and clichés we've all absorbed by age 21. Does this mean we've all been thinking Pulitzer-worthy thoughts?

At least there's nothing unsatisfying about the acting. Especially the acting of Colleen McDonnell, who has the quirkiest role in Margulies' play and makes the most of it. As played by McDonnell, Beth is a neurotic, fidgety mess who's a beauty on the outside and Anthony Perkins within. This thin-skinned, easily offended would-be artist is quick to imagine the worst of other people while remaining blithely unconscious to the damage she perpetrates.

We have every reason to believe that, as her husband claims, Beth has ceased "touching" him both physically and emotionally. We accept this interpretation because Christopher Swan as Tom so capably wins our credulity. Swan's Tom is no paragon; but even with his nostalgia for his party-boy past, he comes across as a man who can be trusted on some subjects, especially his sexual self-confidence. Swan's Tom may be disloyal — in the flashback he shows the wrong sort of attention to Karen — but there's no malice in him, and finally he just wants some sort of happiness. And happiness is what Julie Rowe, as Karen, seems to have attained. She's clearly the stronger partner in her marriage, but that seems to fit what both she and Gabe want, and in any case it's stability she craves, not power. Rowe's Karen is most persuasive when, late in the play, Beth's wrong ideas about their friendship reduce her to tears. Most of the time, though, Rowe shows us something calmer, the deep-seated joy of a satisfied wife and mother. Stability and centeredness may not be very "dramatic," but in Rowe's fine performance they come across as exhilarating. This is impressive acting.

Olson as Gabe isn't quite as convincing (he's alternating in the part with Ned Averill-Snell). True, he mostly makes sense as a writer about food and Karen's much-loved other half, but there are moments, particularly when his lines get a laugh, when his timing seems too conscious, as if he's more aware of the audience than of his interlocutor. As the play's director, though, Olson is superb: He allows each of the characters to make a claim on our attention, and never forces us to choose sides.

My only reservation concerns his choice of putting the Martha's Vineyard flashback high on a stage-right mezzanine: the kitchen set there looks terrific, but its placement feels alienating and, even in the small American Stage space, distant. Since this flashback is the scene of Beth and Tom's first portentous meeting, I particularly regret not having a closer look.

But that's a minor problem. In general, this is a first-class production of a second-rate play, a play with everything but a reason for being. I'll continue to keep an eye out for Margulies' work — any writer this intelligent and talented has to be respected — but after three very similar experiences, I'm closing the book on Dinner With Friends. Pulitzer or not, it's a script of little significance. All the fine acting and directing in the world can't change that fact.

But if you like a good soap opera … this is one of the best.

This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.