I
found myself somewhat fonder of Neil LeBute’s reasons to be pretty (a
title the author specifically wants lower cased) on Broadway at the Lyceum
than I did off-Broadway at the
Lortel, and
it’s not because it has some new cast members, nor because the
production’s
different (it isn't, merely adjusted for the new space), nor even
because the experience is
different (which it likewise isn't, save for
the “bigger-ness” of a larger audience’s response). No, I think it’s
because I
gave in to something that had initially kept me at a distance from it:
It
skews young.
Mr.
LaBute writes these plays, dissections of society and the standards by
which
people are perceived and judged (Fat Pig is
one, The Shape of Things yet
another) and they seem to be harboring these great truths borne out
through
dark human comedy, and yet, you know, they’re not great truths, nor even especially important,
if your view of life is pragmatic
enough,
or if you’ve been around long enough to understand the folly of making
certain
minor gaffes and misunderstandings central to your happiness or
functionality. (That said, the point of such a play might indeed be to illustrate
that a
more mature outlook awaits those who battle through the forest tangle
and
emerge on the other side into sunlight. But even then, it seems that
the
underlying message is: truth awaits
those who would but see it. And I’m
like: So?) The best
way I can put it is, I always feel as if
LaBute is writing plays for the YA crowd. Really: If you were to "young
up" the characters,
re-locate ‘em into, I dunno a senior high school or a community
college,
suddenly all their angst would make a lot more sense and seem better
placed.
Take,
for example, the beleaguered hero of reasons, Greg (Thomas Sadowski). He’s seriously in the shit with his
girlfriend Steph (Marin Ireland)
because her friend Carly
heard him
say to his friend and workmate Kent (they work on a
loading
dock) something about Steph's physical appearance. I won’t ruin the
actual
phrase
for you, but if Greg had been speaking intellectually, what he’d have
been
caught saying, in response to his friend’s assessment of a hot chick at
work,
amounts to this: My girlfriend may not conform to
magazine-model
standards of beauty, but I see the beauty in her realer, more natural
appearance, and I wouldn’t eschew it for anything. Of course, he didn’t say
it like that, he said it in a colloquial way that is beyond any
rationalization, like any answer
to “Does this dress
make my ass look fat?” and when the play-opening fight escalates to the
point
where Steph forces him to repeat exactly what he said—which turns out to be exactly
what she was told—guess what,
it’s bad enough,
bone-deep enough, in Steph’s mind, to be a
relationship-killer.
Meanwhile
it isn’t that Carly (Piper Perabo)
should be so all, you know, that about judging men in
casual
conversation, because her husband, the aforementioned Kent (Steven
Pasquale) does say all the right
stuff, to her, but behind
her back, her
pregnant back (as it were), he’s a crude, womanizing
dick.
Now
they are engagingly worded,
true enough—LaBute writes funny, no question—and
under Terry Kinney’s
direction, they're as
engagingly acted: as the press releases say, what's assembled here is a
hot young cast,
terrifically talented. And because it all matters to them so
much, it becomes persuasive.
And
it’s not as if there’s anything wrong with a play that skews young—I
guess—but
somehow LaBute’s plays also come at you with an air of profundity that
feels
unearned. And I think—I think—it’s
because he’s fascinated with surface issues, and looking to exploit a
deeper
meaning they don’t have, as opposed to the deeper issues they cover, which
means he's not just skewing young, but skewing callow. If that sounds
like splitting
hairs, I commend to you Herb Gardner’s play A Thousand
Clowns, about a dedicated
non-conformist and the
society—and the real, urgent obligations—that ultimately force him into
the
kind of compromise he has spent his life railing against—and
his is not an unhappy ending! It’s
bittersweet and deep, because for all the hero’s righteousness, the
system has
its own righteousness too, the issue is examined exhaustively and with
deep
humanity from all sides, there are no heavies, no moral absolutes, just
some
things that are righter than others and some you learn to live with and
that, my dears, that is
profound. (Forget the lesser
revivals of recent
memory; rent the film, which is an only mildly movie-ized transposition
of the
original production. Or just read it.) And the mind-boggling kicker is,
Gardner
wrote this astonishingly wise, mature, timeless, universal and resonant
play … in his mid-20s. Mr. LaBute is in his mid-40s.
I
guess what I’m saying is, entertaining as reasons to be pretty is, and it is, I want a playwright with a
message to
dramatize something I can think about…not tell me something I could
have said
to him…
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