On The Shoals DINNER AT EIGHT

It's raining stocks and bonds outside, but the portents don't penetrate the penthouses in Dinner at Eight, Kaufman and Ferber's glittering 1932 melodrama of the Depression. The countless plots revolve around a dinner party, an exercise in social climbing rendered all the sillier when the titled English guests of honor pop off to Florida hours before the soiree. While the featherbrained, steel-hearted hostess is lamenting lost social lions and lopsided lobster aspic, she fails to see that her daughter's impending marriage is on the shoals and that her husband's shipping business, the source of all the family's careless rapture, is sinking fast.

This woman is inevitably a figure of fun. In Arvin Brown's perfect production at New Haven's Long Wharf Theater, her blindness becomes a tragic symbol of the willful ignorance of a nation. Tony winner Elizabeth Wilson (Sticks and Bones) is supremely tough-minded and understated. So is the rest of the 24-member cast, notably Charles Keating in the sentimental role of a faded movie star (played by John Barrymore in the 1933 film). This is probably the finest revival of a classic by any U.S. regional theater this year.