| . | 04/30/2009
reasons to be pretty
By: Andy Smith
Though the author and cast can’t be faulted, Director Terry Kinney probably deserves the most credit for finding the humanity under the dark humor and biting critique of Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty, now playing at the Lyceum Theatre.
Known as an actor – he played warden McManus on HBO’s prison drama “Oz,” as a stage director, Kinney, a founding member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre obviously knows his way away around prisons and the prison-like settings of work camps (Of Mice and Men), boot camps (Streamers), and mental hospitals (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
And, teaming up with scenic designer David Gallo, he brings a penal complex atmosphere to the drab apartment and warehouse break rooms of LaBute’s play, even pulling off the potentially risky device of using a loud horn – signaling the beginning/end of breaks and lunch hours – to emphasize the drab, unvarying work lives his characters endure.
Set “somewhere” in the suburbs, LaBute’s four-character play examines two couples. Seemingly well-matched, young marrieds Kent and Carly (Steven Pasquale and Piper Perabo) are callous, ferociously shallow types who no-doubt peaked in high school but continue to hold onto their looks and air of jock/prom queen entitlement, despite their dead-end warehouse jobs.
Marin Ireland and Thomas Sadoski share a rare tender moment
She works security and he works in a stock room with his high-school buddy Greg (Thomas Sadoski, an Off Broadway mainstay also memorable in Amy Heckerling’s film Loser), a disaffected college dropout who keeps paperbacks of Swift and Jack London in his coveralls.
pretty’s title and action is prompted by an offhand remark a beer-fueled Greg makes about his girlfriend, Steph (Marin Ireland), a hair stylist who doesn’t seem to take much interest in her own looks. Greg’s crack, eagerly parroted to combustible, insecure Steph by ‘best friend’ Carly, ignites a knock-down fight, a humiliating scene in a mall food court, and the couple’s separation. Sad, but gaining strength through independence, Steph begins a new relationship, while Greg starts to mature, finally rebelling against Kent’s trophy-obsessed mindset. Wife, mistress or softball league hardware, they’re all just hood ornaments for his narcissism.
LaBute made his mark as writer/director of the 1997 indie sensation In the Company of Men (which helped launch Aaron Eckhart to stardom) and, as a writer, has left behind a prolific trail of bitterness ever since—some of it pointed (The Shape of Things), some pointless (Your Friends and Neighbors). While his material always shows the working of an incisive mind, LaBute’s characters – even when they offer juicy opportunities for actors – frequently fall short of becoming fully developed human beings. With reasons to be pretty’s Greg and Steph, however, he’s made progress, creating people, who, though highly flawed, are capable of showing true compassion.
The four well-chosen actors all do excellent work. The relatively inexperienced Perabo is fine in the least demanding part, while Pasquale, a veteran of LaBute’s Fat Pig, doesn’t shy away from portraying his character as both bully and coward.
An emotional quick-change artist equally adept with dialogue, Ireland is almost transcendent as the thin-skinned Steph. And with Sadoski, LaBute may have found his ideal actor, a sensitive performer able to step inside his everyman characters as skillfully as Eckhart takes over the author’s heartless heels.
No masterpiece, reasons to be pretty is a well worth a look—a thought-provoking dark comedy that sticks with you after you’ve left the theater.
reasons to be pretty, Neil LaBute’s Broadway debut, is enjoying an open-ended run at The Lyceum Theater, 149 W. 45th St. For tickets, visit http://www.reasonstobepretty.com
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