As wine loosens the conversation, Hawk becomes the evening\u2019s catalyst, his calm provocations nudging the couple toward truths they\u2019ve been avoiding. Joe, a complacent music teacher, bristles at the neighbors\u2019 suggestion of a foursome. It becomes the night\u2019s most destabilizing moment \u2014 not for its shock value, but for the way it exposes desire, resentment and the stories he and Angela, an unmoored stay-at-home wife, have been clinging to. Wilde lets the reactions play out in micro-expressions: Joe\u2019s jaw setting, Angela\u2019s flicker of curiosity, Hawk\u2019s overtures, Pi\u00f1a\u2019s assurance. <\/p>\n
The evening\u2019s escalating absurdity owes just as much to the script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, which balances provocation, emotional candor and farce with a deceptively light touch. Their dialogue has a rhythmic snap \u2014 quick and revealing \u2014 weaving in perimenopause asides and Sade obsessions without feeling contrived. It\u2019s revelatory, exposing the carefully calibrated selves each character presents to the room. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As wine loosens the conversation, Hawk becomes the evening\u2019s catalyst, his calm provocations nudging the couple toward truths…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-411461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}