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Hostile makeover
Neil LaBute examines life and art
BY CAROLYN CLAY

The Shape of Things
By Neil LaBute. Directed by Paul Melone. Set by Paul Theriault. Lighting by C. Scott Ananian. Costumes by Gail Buckley. Sound and original music by Rick Brenner. With Laura Latreille, Tommy Day Carey, Stacy Fischer, and Walter Belenky. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for the Arts through February 22.


Neil LaBute came to attention showing men behaving badly — in the 1997 film In the Company of Men, where two corporate types seduce and then spurn a deaf woman. Having established himself as the anti–Alan Alda, LaBute makes a woman the user in the 2001 play The Shape of Things, which was a success in London and Off Broadway and will be released this year as a film with Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz. He appears to be an equal-opportunity scrutinizer of the chilling amorality of which ordinary humankind is capable. Stick around long enough and Bambi will do something bloody.

The Shape of Things, which is getting a crisp New England premiere courtesy of SpeakEasy Stage Company, is up to more than gender-relations bashing, however. Like David Mamet’s Oleanna, the play is bound to hit hot buttons, though not with the heavy finger of In the Company of Men. Here, in a Biblical fable set on the campus of a Midwestern liberal arts college, " Adam " is a slightly shlubby if laid-back English major moonlighting as a security guard in the institution’s museum. " Eve " (actually, Evelyn) is the graduate art student who offers him a new image and the imitation of love in exchange for his imperfection-riddled identity and complete surrender.

The play, on the surface a makeover tale and unlikely romance, lobs troubling questions about cruelty in the service of art, what in fact constitutes art, and the effect, in a surface-crazed society, of outer beauty on inner character. As the initially nerdy Adam follows the sexual carrot lurking behind girlfriend Evelyn’s suggestions, changing his hairstyle, going to the gym and losing weight, sharpening up his wardrobe, even submitting to plastic surgery, he is perceived as improved. But, newly duplicitous, is he?

If the talk of æsthetics and corruption sounds ponderous, bear in mind that LaBute throws in some sparring quotes from Oscar Wilde, who posed serious questions about art and society in comedies that went down as easily as soufflés. LaBute is not a whipper-upper of soufflés; his works don’t need to sit around long before their human ingredients fall. But The Shape of Things is as amusing as it is provocative. Not entirely plausible (who, one wonders, is paying for scholarship student Adam’s new accouterment?) and brandishing a surprise ending that’s no surprise, it nonetheless crackles with candor. And it’s ably performed here by a company led by Laura Latreille, whose Evelyn is glacial yet sexy, and Tommy Day Carey, a sympathetic Adam never wholly at home with his newly forked tongue or sexual good fortune. The cast’s quartet is completed by Walter Belenky as Adam’s crass former roommate Phillip, the only character rattled by his friend’s co-opting, and Stacy Fischer as Phillip’s acquiescent fiancée, Jenny, who finds herself attracted to the skin-deep new Adam.

Written in short scenes separated by blackouts, LaBute’s two-hour play is unrelentingly sharp, with heartland collegiates Evelyn, Adam, and Phillip exhibiting a snappiness that wouldn’t be altogether buyable at Harvard. But of course that’s also true of the oft-evoked Wilde’s aphorism-spitting aristos. And the playwright makes the indefatigably confident and controlling Evelyn a blinkered as well as ruthless artist who doesn’t know about much but her own single-minded creation. She gets none of " English-lit prick " Adam’s oft-witty book references (with the exception of Wilde) and is utterly unfazed by her failure.

Indeed, Latreille’s robotic femme fatale, albeit humanized by an earthy laugh, is too predatory to be fazed by much. And if her charade-ending thesis-project presentation, like Adam’s reaction (he likens her art to the Nazis’ recycling of human parts), is over the top, Latreille plows through it with aplomb bordering on relish. Carey’s tender Adam is less spunky than Eliza Doolittle but hints at her resilience. And Fischer nails Jenny’s essential confusion, whether dispensing saccharine or seduction. Only Belenky is a bit troublesome, playing into rather than against the provincial male asshole in the not unperceptive Phil.

Director Paul Melone, abetted by a mix of percussive music and synthesized noise by sound designer Rick Brenner and some slinky furniture moving by the cast, keeps the play at once jumpy and fluid. The Shape of Things is less chilling than some of LaBute’s more violent forays underneath the rotting log of human interaction (including bash). Still, it makes you wince at, among other things, your own ability to be entertained by human cruelty, whether it’s being committed in the service of art or in that of more ignoble callings. LaBute’s latest play, which opened recently in New York, may be called The Mercy Seat, but he isn’t sitting in it.

Issue Date: February 6 - 13, 2003
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