reasons to be pretty

Last night my friend Michael took me to see "reasons to be pretty" by Neil LaBute. I liked it allot. It was a comedy with several sets, all impressionistic, middle class, warehouse working men & women. There were dual themes in the play. The obvious was beauty and the effects it has on both women & men. Mostly from a negative perspective. The other theme is a man coming of age type of story.

The whole play begins with a women picking a fight with her boyfriend because she heard that he referred to her as "having an ugly face." And then off goes the play. This play was taken from Off-Broadway to it new Broadway home. It's a good show, and the main character's progression from drop out, warehouse worker/womanizer to good guy is at times pitiful. But the brilliantly witty script kept the heavy scenes light enough to keep the point, but not drive home how pathetic the characters & situations really are.

If I had to pick apart this show, I would say all the performances were great. The set was OK, not awesome. Mr. LaBute's script is very funny & poignant. I thought his men's dialogue was much better written than the women's. What he wrote for the men was nothing short of brilliant. I attribute that to my assumption that the playwright is straight. He just didn't capture the way women talk/fight. It sounded constructed and still on the page. Also, there was a fight scene that just didn't work. It's necessary for the show, but stage combat is so difficult to carry off. It was way to staged looking and unbelievably brutal for the amount of blood/injury that resulted.

Yes go see this. I'm dying to know what you think.