Reasons To Be Pretty

Photo/Joan Marcus

Reasons To Be Pretty is certainly the laziest of Neil LaBute's three body-image themed plays (also The Shape of Things and Fat Pig). Thomas Sadoski comes across genuinely as Greg, but the other three actors seem to just be working on him, with no regard or care for self. The fact that Alison Pill is forced to emote for cheap entertainment is a real waste of talent (that she still almost manages to pull off), though no surprise from Pablo Schreiber, whose dismissive veneer makes him a perfectly unflinching actor for LaBute's plays. Piper Perabo, on the other hand, comes as a real surprise, interjecting rocky subtext into the obvious and polished dialogue. Right now, the show needs its four exceptionally weak monologues, for they show us what the actors are capable of, but LaBute would do well to deepen his characters--then he might be able to trust them a little more. Don't get me wrong: artifice, made sharp enough, can still be highly entertaining--even blanks pop when they go off. I was just hoping for more.

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The Actor's NightmareThe Real Inspector Hound

I had a blast at this double-bill of theatre-related one-acts at T. Schreiber Studio. First, Christopher Durang's delightful absurdity in which a hapless accountant is mistaken for an actor and forced to fend for himself on stage in front of an audience. The play is my preferred brand of hilarious, as the fish-out-of-water accountant (Michael Black) flops about trying to fake his way through a play that morphs Coward, Shakespeare and Beckett, and I don't have a single serious complaint about this production, which has been well-paced for madcap fun and is energized by Black's endearing performance. Second, Tom Stoppard's barbed comedy in which two drama critics critique (and eventually enter) a run-of-the-mill whodunit. It's not as successfully realized in this production as the Durang piece - not all of the performances in the play within the play are sufficiently heightened enough - but it's good, snickering fun anyhow, and the actors playing the critics (Julian Elfer and Rick Forstmann) are devilishly spot-on. Special mentions: Nan Wray, appearing in both plays and pitch-perfect in each, and George Allison, who's come up with yet another impressive set design for the modest T. Schreiber space.

Blink

The fourth character in Blink, the absent father, is represented by an empty hospital bed. The characters talk about him, about the way he sometimes blinks to communicate. Now, the father has little to do with the play, but that idea of talking laboriously through blinks stuck with me when trying to describe Ian Rowlands's play, for that's how it comes across. Blink's series of artificial monologues and scenes are rarely linked together by the aggressive push-and-pull energy it needs, and so the words all come across as deliberate and overdone. There are some good moments from Sion Pritchard, who plays an abused son, but only when he's speaking directly to Rhian Blythe, who plays his first love. It's a shame so much of the play focuses on things other than that relationship, for without focus, the blinks mean nothing.

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Artefacts

Mike Bartlett's new play, Artefacts, is clever in the best possible way: it turns shallow thoughts into deep observations about character, and pulls apt cultural metaphors out of those depths. By grounding itself in a family drama—a spoiled British girl learns she is half-Iraqi—it avoids the pitfalls of political drama and speaks personally rather than preachingly. It's also a great demonstration of the old maxim about writing: "Show, don't tell." The stream-of-consciousness of a typical, selfish teenage girl, allows him to tell plenty, but the telling itself shows us even more about ourselves.

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Port Authority

Port Authority was a little too natural for me: the hypnotism of Conor McPherson's passive triptych of unexplainable feelings--particularly longings--nearly put me to sleep. I longed for a little bit of action--some devil in all those rich details--but then again, this is a different animal from The Seafarer. Neither John Gallagher, Jr., nor Jim Norton managed to convey anything other than dialog to me, but I was pleasantly surprised by Brian D'Arcy James, who plays the crude Dermot with a ravenous but reserved desire, the sort found in men who don't believe themselves worthy. In any case, I can normally tell a show isn't working for me when the lighting starts to catch my eye: in this case, it doesn't help that director Henry Wishcamper pays more attention to the plating than the food.

Rafta Rafta

photo: Monique Carboni

The pace is especially relaxed at first: we're taking in the South Asian customs and household dynamics as much as we're following the often gently comic story of the newlyweds who, for one reason or another, can't seem to consummate their marriage. Aside from a couple of quick spikes of melodrama, the play is a warmly amusing, leisurely slice of Anglo-Indian life, rich with keen observational detail and humor that is rooted in the cultural values of the characters. It's very much an ensemble piece in which newlyweds, parents, relations and friends are coming and going, and no one in this uniformly excellent ensemble is out to steal undue focus. A genuine pleasure, and the best effort I've seen from The New Group in at least a couple of years.