Having missed last year's Off-Broadway run of "reasons to be pretty," I was thrilled to finally see it on Broadway. While maybe not one of the best things I've seen overall, it's definitely the best thing I've seen in 2009.
Terry Kinney's direction and the 4-person cast's inspired performances (2 of which are nominated for Tony awards) do great justice to Neil LaBute's brilliant script. The scenes are tight and explosive, scaling extreme heights and depths of pain, anger, humor, betrayal, and dishonesty. The actors themselves, however, are remarkably honest in their portrayals, particularly Thomas Sadoski as Greg. His raw emotion and visible growth throughout the course of the play easily mark one of the best performances of the year.
The characters are all young members of the working class, blue-collar employees without much education. As LaBute details in the play's preface, these are the kinds of people he truly admires. He is in no way mocking or shaming them -- rather, he is celebrating their courage and perseverance. Steph works at SuperCuts, Greg and Kent load crates and boxes into a Sam's Club-esque megastore, and Carly works at the same warehouse as a security guard. Illustrations of their working class world are sprinkled throughout the play in a myriad of delicate details -- in the kind of flowers Greg brings Steph, in the state of Greg's jeans, how Steph buys a new blue and brown outfit for her date and accessorizes it with black shoes and a black purse, even though she had a brown purse in the previous scene (presumably because those are the only dressy shoes she has).
That last observation might make me guilty of the very thing LaBute is warning against with this play: a concentration on appearance, on the physical, a shallow view of the world and its citizens. In a not unfamiliar theme, even for himself (e.g. The Shape of Things), LaBute portrays people who are pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside and vice versa. However, all of the characters are more complex than that, and the audience is required to ponder more than the usual questions. For example, if you truly love someone for who they are inside, how much does the outside still matter? Can you convince yourself to be attracted to someone your own taste and society at large deem unattractive? Would you be able to date someone believing they were not attracted to you, even if you knew that they truly loved and cared for you? How much does our own self-esteem depend upon the physical scorecard rated by those we are most vulnerable with? What do you do when you look "normal" and that isn't enough?
LaBute's writing and Kinney's direction take each scene to unexpected places, searching for these answers and staring down previously accepted truths.
There are more than enough reasons why this production was nominated for a Tony for Best Play.
Terry Kinney's direction and the 4-person cast's inspired performances (2 of which are nominated for Tony awards) do great justice to Neil LaBute's brilliant script. The scenes are tight and explosive, scaling extreme heights and depths of pain, anger, humor, betrayal, and dishonesty. The actors themselves, however, are remarkably honest in their portrayals, particularly Thomas Sadoski as Greg. His raw emotion and visible growth throughout the course of the play easily mark one of the best performances of the year.
The characters are all young members of the working class, blue-collar employees without much education. As LaBute details in the play's preface, these are the kinds of people he truly admires. He is in no way mocking or shaming them -- rather, he is celebrating their courage and perseverance. Steph works at SuperCuts, Greg and Kent load crates and boxes into a Sam's Club-esque megastore, and Carly works at the same warehouse as a security guard. Illustrations of their working class world are sprinkled throughout the play in a myriad of delicate details -- in the kind of flowers Greg brings Steph, in the state of Greg's jeans, how Steph buys a new blue and brown outfit for her date and accessorizes it with black shoes and a black purse, even though she had a brown purse in the previous scene (presumably because those are the only dressy shoes she has).
That last observation might make me guilty of the very thing LaBute is warning against with this play: a concentration on appearance, on the physical, a shallow view of the world and its citizens. In a not unfamiliar theme, even for himself (e.g. The Shape of Things), LaBute portrays people who are pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside and vice versa. However, all of the characters are more complex than that, and the audience is required to ponder more than the usual questions. For example, if you truly love someone for who they are inside, how much does the outside still matter? Can you convince yourself to be attracted to someone your own taste and society at large deem unattractive? Would you be able to date someone believing they were not attracted to you, even if you knew that they truly loved and cared for you? How much does our own self-esteem depend upon the physical scorecard rated by those we are most vulnerable with? What do you do when you look "normal" and that isn't enough?
LaBute's writing and Kinney's direction take each scene to unexpected places, searching for these answers and staring down previously accepted truths.
There are more than enough reasons why this production was nominated for a Tony for Best Play.
At the Lyceum Theatre, 149 W 45th St.
