Margulies' Dinner with Friends won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in the year 2000. This would make one think that it was greeted with critical applause in every published account. Although most critics praised the play, mostly because they like Margulies' writing, they do not all think that it is his best work.

Los Angeles Times Critic Michael Phillips says that although Dinner with Friends might not be as distinctive as some of Margulies' past work, it is "a lively, witty and finally bittersweet question in the form of a two-act comedy-drama." The question that Phillips is referring to is, "How do any two people keep it together?"

This question (and its subsequent answer, if any) could be viewed, as some Critics have viewed it, as a mundane topic for a play. But John Simon in the New York Magazine believes that' "Margulies is a master of...