"reasons to be pretty," a 2009 Tony nominee for Best Play, allows the audience to witness the aftermath of a seemingly innocuous remark made by a young man about his girlfriend's looks. By cataloguing the struggles of four friends and the breakdown of their relationships, playwright Neil LaBute offers a realistic commentary on the tiresome shallowness of certain lifestyles and relationships and also, more generally, on the American obsession with physical appearance.
SpeakEasy Stage Company General Manager Paul Melone returns to stage this month for the third and final installment of LaBute's unofficial trilogy at the Boston Center for the Arts.
The play opens with an extremely angry young woman screaming expletives at her confused and overwhelmed boyfriend. No explanation is initially offered for the woman's tirade. By the end of the first scene, however, it is revealed that she is reacting to a comment made by her boyfriend of four years, in which he described her looks as "regular" in comparison to a "pretty" girl's.
Despite the fact that both Steph (Angie Jepson) and Greg (Andy Macdonald) seem to genuinely care about one another throughout the course of the play, their relationship is ultimately unable to overcome the anger and conflicts that are driven to the surface by this casual but honest remark.
The play's four characters all seem to share deep?seated insecurities and frustrations about themselves and their lives. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that much of their frustration is the result of not only lack of depth or interest in their romantic relationships but also in their day?to?day lives.
The two men, Greg and Kent (Burt Grinstead), are longtime friends who work together in dead?end factory jobs, with their only real means of excitement coming from the company baseball team and checking out pretty girls at the factory. The two women, Steph, a hairdresser, and Carly (Danielle Muehlen), a security guard, are similarly tied to their monotonous daily routines. All four of them seem to experience crises as they realize the lack of fulfillment in their lives.
The play takes place in the United States, but the particular city is never explicitly stated. The scenes also take place in nondescript settings (a mall, a factory, a restaurant), all of which are very familiar places to most average Americans. The ambiguity highlights the fact that these characters' stories could easily have occurred in any number of places to any number of people, demonstrating the universality of the show's message.
The small theater and sparse set at the Boston Center for the Arts serve this production well. The intimate space allows for a heightened feeling of connection between the audience and the actors, as the characters' different inner insecurities and insufficiencies are revealed onstage. The lack of an elaborate setting requires more concentration on the dialogue and interactions between characters, which lends the show a less theatrical and more real?life atmosphere that complements the tone of the play itself.
LaBute has often been criticized for being misanthropic or misogynistic. These claims are certainly evident, especially at the beginning of the show. Both female characters come off initially as irrational and fairly unsympathetic. The men must find a way to appease them, as Kent does, or else deal with their misguided anger, as Greg must. Early on, in an almost laughably clich?©d scene, the two male characters sit down in the factory break room and exclaim "Women!" with mutual frustration and sympathy.
Despite the fact that LaBute evidently embraces some of the contrived societal norms with which most Americans are familiar, the characters are all revealed to have depth. As the story progresses and the characters develop, LaBute shows more rational, sympathetic and complex sides of the female characters and unveils insecure layers of the males. Although certain characters or aspects of this play may come off as sexist, LaBute seems to include these themes in order to criticize them rather than glorify them.
The premise of "reasons to be pretty" might seem a bit dramatic but the authentic feeling of LaBute's dialogue, combined with a talented cast of four actors, makes for a highly realistic, relatable play.
