Dental Society Midwinter Meeting Chicago Dramatists
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The 80-minute one-act is presented almost entirely in flashback. Three men and three women play multiple roles, reenacting the title meeting—held at a Marriott in Skokie one frigid January—as they narrate it story-theater style. Midwestern dentists have gathered to gain new insights into the art, craft, and science of their profession—and to take a deductible vacation away from their spouses and kids. The formal program includes seminars and breakout sessions on such topics as “Fluoride and Fluoridation: A History,” as well as cautionary speeches about professional hazards like drug addiction and insurance fraud. But informally, it’s all about swimming in the heated pool, hoarding samples from dental-supply vendors, late-night drinking, karaoke, and, of course, hooking up. “We’re aching to fool around with people with exceedingly clean teeth,” one man admits.
The story builds to its climax in intriguingly digressive fashion, via a series of vignettes whose quirky content and casual, seemingly rambling style recall a Robert Altman film. Some are plain funny. A drunk couple plans to have sex, if only the woman can get her hotel-room key card to work. Two women gossip loudly in the swimming pool; that their pantomimed swimming isn’t at all convincing makes the bit that much more amusing. But the humor gradually turns darker and deeper. A dentist finds herself torn between morality and self-interest, for instance, when she tries to cancel her contract with the vendor who sold her a teeth-bleaching product that turned out to be toxic to her vain patients.
