The claustrophobically cruel love affair may well be playwright/filmmaker Neil LaBute’s calling card. In his film In the Company of Men, testosterone-enhanced salarymen destroy a deaf co-worker. In his current Off Broadway play The Mercy Seat, which is set in Manhattan on September 12, 2001, the events of September 11 give a pair of lovers the perfect alibi for faking their death. And in The Shape of Things, a 2001 London hit that was also successful Off Broadway that year and will receive its area premiere next weekend courtesy of Speakeasy Stage Company, an ambitious wanna-be artist named Evelyn plays Pygmalion to her shlumpy, dumpy Galatea of a boyfriend, fellow student and museum security guard Adam. Her ministrations, which include cajolery and shaming, transform him into someone girlfriend-worthy. Is this art? Or just manipulation?
"I have great affection for Evelyn," explains LaBute by phone from his home in Chicago. "While I don’t agree with her methods, I completely understand her zealousness for what she does. The job of a student or an artist is to push the boundaries and say, ‘Is that the way it is?’ At the end of the day, I don’t want people to side with Adam and say, ‘Oh, he got shafted.’ "
In the play, Evelyn and Adam (the Old Testament allusion is intentional) are students "at a liberal-arts college in a conservative Midwestern town," a setting LaBute finds rife with dramatic possibilities. "They’re such interesting places because the community is often conservative, and the students are young and sometimes out of control." Further charging the situation are Adam’s friend Philip and Philip’s fiancée, Jenny. Jenny has a dormant crush on Adam; Philip is threatened by Evelyn’s brashness and then appalled by Adam’s "metamorphosis." "You’re like Frankenstein," he tells his friend. "You mean Frankenstein’s monster, Frankenstein was the doctor," Adam responds. Throughout The Shape of Things, literary and popular-culture references abound. Adam takes the role of the know-it-all humanities major. Evelyn uses television shows from her childhood as metaphors. In previous LaBute works, among them the film Nurse Betty, pop culture is a crucible in which personalities are forged and subsumed. "We use pop culture like currency all the time," the playwright points out. "We use it the way people used to use intellectual references to be up-to-the-minute. It’s just anything you have that somebody else doesn’t have, whether it’s money or status or ‘I know one thing about this television show that you don’t.’ Evelyn and Adam are evenly matched, so it keeps the playing field level."
But the twist in The Shape of Things is the cost of Adam’s makeover. "Adam is shy, a little bit of a nerd," explains Paul Melone, who is directing the SpeakEasy production. "When she starts to transform him, his self-image grows, but since the change has been pushed on him by Evelyn, he can’t own it. Every bit of pride he has in his new body, wardrobe, and success is mirrored by shame that he didn’t do this himself but had to be persuaded."
And as the play unfolds, the stakes get higher and higher for Adam. "As soon as he has more choices in his life, more people who get interested in him, the more bad choices he starts to make," LaBute observes. "He’s not the architect of his own doom, but he’s one of the contractors."
The Shape of Things is presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End, January 31 through February 22. Tickets are $25 to $31; call (617) 426-2787.
