Jim Lichtscheidl and Sun Mee Chomet Photo by Lauren B. Photography

No worries there–I found Dinner for One is every bit as wonderful when going back for a second helping. In fact, the indelible performances by Chomet and Lichtscheidl felt more nuanced, more finely tuned than I had remembered, which is an extremely high bar to have surpassed. Baldwin's direction remains an adroit balancing act of laugh-out loud humor, from slapstick to character-driven comedy, and poignancy of the most delicate order. Dinner for On is based upon a twelve-minute-long comedy sketch written in the 1920s by English actor-writer Lauri Wylie, and has had an intriguing history. It was first performed in 1934 as part of a revue of such sketches compiled by Wylie. In 1953, Hermione Gingold and Billy De Wolfe performed the original sketch on Broadway in John Murray Anderson's Almanac. Not long after, Freddie Frinton and May Warden were performing it in various theatres and music halls in England. An eighteen-minute-long version of the sketch was broadcast on German television, and since its broadcast has become an annual New Year's Eve tradition there, spreading to Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg, South Africa, and Australia, making it (according to the Guinness Book of Records) the most frequently repeated broadcast in history. Baldwin, Chomet and Lichtscheidl have expanded Dinner for On into a beautiful one-act play.

If you are wondering why Dinner for One is broadcast New Year's Eve, it is simple enough to say that the play is set on a succession of New Year's Eves, landing for most of its sixty minutes on the last of those. Beyond its appointment with the calendar, the play, like New Year's Eve, is a paean to the remembrance of the good times that are in our past, a bittersweet recreation of people and events that made our lives wonderful, and the blend of hope and terror that accompanies the specter of another year rising. Dinner for One could not fail to amuse year after year (as my return visit confirms) but also invites us to consider the great joys, the triumphs, the setbacks, and scars we have absorbed in the closing year, and to be invigorated to face the year ahead.

Entering, we face a stage designed (quite marvelously by Eli Sherlock) to resemble a grand but somewhat musty dining room in a residence that, no doubt, has housed persons of prominence. A large dining table is center stage, but a white gauze sheet conceals the tabletop. The rear of the stage is covered with empty frames of different sizes, snugly hung salon style. One can imagine a wall once saturated with portraits of family members and scenes that captured the beauty of life, now all gone but the frames, with one notably large frame among the others. On one side of the stage is an elegant staircase, on the other a buffet with a pass-through to the manse's kitchen. There is also an early gramophone, the type that played music off of wax cylinders that preceded the flat discs we call records.

Music from the era of wax cylinders plays as we settle in (Jaime Lupercio did the exquisite sound design). The play begins with a few brief scenes in which a butler, James (Jim Lichtscheidl), rings a bell–typical of the playfulness of Dinner for One, there is no sound, but we know it has been rung–and Miss Sophie (Sum Mee Chomet) haltingly descends the staircase dressed all in black, a veil covering her hair and face. We learn that not only is it New Year's Eve, but also Miss Sophie's birthday. She, however, appears to be in mourning. She refuses the goblet James extends to her, turns and retreats back up the steps. In successive scenes the routine is repeated, with James trying harder and harder each time to entice Miss Sophie–cupcakes and balloons are among his ploys.

After several rounds of this, there is a pause and a lush scarlet curtain drops. When it rises, we learn that twenty years have passed. This time, the white sheet is removed from the table and, upon James' command, a curtain rises behind that particularly large frame to reveal a violinist and pianist, poised to provide musical entertainment. Once again James summons Miss Sophie. Her black garb is gone, replaced by a mammoth green gown (Ora Jewell-Busche designed the brilliant costumes) with a train so comically full, Miss Sophie can only move by keeping it draped over her arm.

Now the dinner party begins, a celebration of Miss Sophie's birthday as well as the New Year. The guests are four gentlemen, Miss Sophie's great admirers and lovers. Only, they are not actually present; Miss Sophie has outlived them all. It is left to James to impersonate each one in turn, exchanging sweet pleasantries with the guest of honor, presenting her with their gifts, and making eloquent toasts to her. Each has an opportunity to retrieve a treasured memory and reenact it with their beloved Sophie.

Lichtscheidl is dazzling as he hops from chair to chair, taking on the guise of Sir Toby, a grandiloquent actor; Admiral Von Schneider, who punctuates his toasts with the very loud clanging of a ship's bell; the bashful Mr. Pomeroy, whose profession, as well as his speech, is unclear, but who nonetheless makes his affection for Miss Sophie known; and Mr. Winterbottom, a revered and highly romantic, somewhat lecherous poet. Sophie adores them all! Lichtscheidl creates a set of mannerisms and speech patterns distinctive for each of the guest, each a comedic gem. Because James must take part in each of the gentlemen's toasts, in short order he becomes hilariously inebriated, which Lichtscheidl portrays with marvelous physicality.

Chomet is equally marvelous as Miss Sophie. There are a few moments of physical humor, which she delivers with aplomb–the means to which she resorts to pull herself seated in her chair up to the dining table will live on in memory–but for the most part, Miss Sophie is revealed by way of her simpering responses to attention and flattery, her ability to resurrect girlish coquettishness, her well-rehearsed ability to dispatch commands to James, and–in moments that fall in between, her appearance of being utterly lost within the long arc of her life. Miss Sophie and James depend on one another to retain purpose in life. Similarly, Lichtscheidl and Chomet's performances play off one another with such finesse, it is unimaginable to consider one without the other.

Allow me to admit that a man becoming increasingly drunk, his speech and behavior increasingly sloppy, is not usually my idea of great wit and it may not be yours, but trust me when I say that between Lichtscheidl's scrupulous performance and the grace with which James and Miss Sophie interact, it truly is a display of wit that prompts hearty and approving laughter. Similarly, a running gag about a bump in the rug upon which James trips is the kind of bit that can easily become wearisome, but not here: each incident is a fresh occurrence of that familiar stumble and it only becomes funnier.

The toasts, the dances, the recreated music hall number sung at a ship's wheel (a genuine delight) all pass, and the party winds down, with just one gift left to be opened. It becomes the catalyst that transforms the spirited, giddy romp into a heart-breaking meditation on the course of a long life, with its treasures enduring only in the willful imagination of she who has lived it, and the devoted attention of the one enduring love in her life. Even that bump on the rug, source of such levity moments before, proves to have the ability to stir the heart.

I have yet to praise the music, which is an essential component of Dinner for One. Music director Emilia Mettenbrink provides beautiful arrangements drawn largely from the classical repertoire (that giddy music hall turn excepted), shifting tones to reflect the play's moods. In a rather neat trick by the play's creators, the musicians are meant to be there as entertainment for Miss Sophie and her guests, but in truth become the soundtrack to Miss Sophie's reel of memories as they are unspooled. The musicians are double cast; at the opening night performance I attended, pianist Lara Bolton and violinist Brittany Henry Quinn performed, playing beautifully throughout.

Dinner for One is a small and quiet show, without the big hoopla and stage effects of some holiday fare, or the extensive dramatic narrative of other offerings, and certainly without any Christmas carols, though there is one song that hearkens to the season, played in a manner that wraps the entire production up with a warm embrace. It is a show much easier to love than to describe, and truly a gift to those who find their way to Miss Sophie's dining room.

Dinner for One runs through January 5, 2025, at the Jungle Theater, 2951 Lyndale Avenue S., Minneapolis MN. For tickets and information, please visit www.jungletheater.com.

Co-Creators: Christina Baldwin, Sun Mee Chomet, Jim Lichtscheidl; Director: Christina Baldwin; Music Director and Arrangements: Emilia Mettenbrink; Set Design: Eli Sherlock; Costume Design: Ora Jewell-Busche; Lighting Design: Marcus Dilliard; Sound Designer: Jaime Lupercio; Properties Designer/Stage Manager: John Novak; Technical Director: John Lutz; Production Manager: Kathy Maxwell.

Cast: Sun Mee Chomet (Miss Sophie), Joy Dolo (Understudy for Miss Sophie), Tyson Forbes (Understudy for James), Jim Lichtscheidl (James). Musicians: Lara Bolton (piano) Dan Chouinard (piano), Emilia Mettenbrink (violin), Brittany Henry Quinn (violin).