The Shape of Things does not take to SpeakEasy's mold

The script is unparalleled: one of the most fascinating ideas I've seen onstage this season. Tackling such obtuse subjects as art, love, and morality, the ideas expressed in The Shape of Things at the SpeakEasy Stage may leave you speechless. That is, if you don't get bogged down with all the melodrama.

The show begins with a chance encounter between awkward undergrad security guard Adam, played by Tommy Day Carey, and indie activist post-grad student Evelyn, played by Laura Latreille. The two meet, she spray paints her number on his jacket, they go out, bring a camera into the bedroom, and so on _ you know the usual alternative dating protocol, except that as the play progresses you realize that Evelyn isn't really dating Adam at all. Instead, he is her art project for the semester.

While he falls in love with her, she is using that love to test his free will. To her, he is just a living, breathing, hunk of flesh. It would have been marvelous to watch that idea unravel, however it is just one of several story lines, infused with melodrama on the level of middle school crushes and temper tantrums.

In between Adam following Evelyn around like a sick puppy (and believe me he was), there is his best friend Philip (Walter Belenky) and Phillip's fianc?©e, Jenny (Stacy Fischer), mucking up his life. In one scene, Phillip and Jenny discussed their plans to wed underwater. It might have been romantic if Jenny's voice wasn't so high and sing-songy that you wanted to dunk her under the sea prematurely.

Moving on to the theme of the show, the whole idea, the cr??me of the questions asks simply, "How far would you go for love?" If your significant other would find you more desirable if you were twenty pounds thinner and had a slightly different nose, is it worth it to change yourself for them? Adam would say yes.

Throughout the show he decides that this is a valuable investment, so much so that by the end of the play he has essentially transformed himself into a better looking and better dressed Adam for Evelyn. As an audience, you believe Carey's performance. You see how much he just wants to be liked, telling Evelyn in a bout of sheer honesty, "You are dangerously close to owning me," and you empathize. It could happen. It probably does every day to some extent to real people in real relationships.

However, Latrielle's performance as Evelyn lacked that sense of believability. As the play's key manipulator, she became a stereotype: the bitch. As the premiere artist, she needed to be more voyeuristic about their relationship, more analytical in terms of why her significant other was behaving the way he was, instead of the sheer spite that she seemed to work from. It was disappointing, as her character had the possibility for the most dimensions of anyone on stage. For while she's the artist, the man-eater, she also was the student who had never tried to shape the will of another so completely. Yes, to be brief, the show is sadistic. But the way human beings can be manipulated, how they place value in their lives is also tantalizing.

The Shape of Things has the potential to dazzle. It's fresh, different, and psychologically stimulating, which is why it's such a shame that it has been directed into such a corner. In trying to be different, the play instead became predictable. Everything in the production seems to be vying for the traditional alternative feel, ranging from the retro, multi-color lighting to the way the actors handled the stage changes. The stage itself looks like it has been drawn upon with crayons. And, while slightly curious at first, it ended up distracting from the story, focusing too much on being different than being well done.