Filmmaker and dramatist Neil LaBute has suffered from a reputation as a raging misogynist because of pieces such as “In the Company of Men” and “Fat Pig,” in which women are treated very badly by men.
Many of those who attack LaBute fall into that terrible trap of assuming a writer is endorsing the behavior of his characters. (The same thing has happened to David Mamet with some of his blistering male-female dramas such as “Oleanna”).
I think LaBute has tried to examine sexism and that terrible macho gang mentality of men on their own talking about women. The writer holds a mirror up to contemporary male behavior and it is too much for some people.
LaBute has changed course a bit with his terrific Tony-nominated Broadway play, “reasons to be pretty,” in which we follow a young man named Greg (Thomas Sadoski, above) after he makes an unfortunate remark about the “regular” looks of his live-in girlfriend Steph (Marin Ireland, above).
Greg made the comment to his buddy Kent (Steven Pasquale) at a party where, unfortunately, Kent’s wife Carly (Piper Perabo) heard what was said and passed it along to her best friend, Steph.
“reasons to be pretty” opens with an explosive confrontation between Steph and Greg where he tries to explain what he meant by “regular” and she burns with rage about being publicly dissed by her boyfriend.
It’s always tricky to start a dramatic piece at such a fever pitch — LaBute and director Terry Kinney run the risk of hitting us with so much anger that we are turned off before we get to know who these people are.
But, Sadoski’s horrified reaction to Ireland’s tirade anchors us in the middle of a primal situation — everybody’s hope that they are seen as being “pretty” or “handsome” in the eyes of those who love them.
The play goes on to explore the two couples after Greg and Steph break up and we learn of the secret problems between Kent and Carly.
“I’ve written about a lot of men who are really little boys at heart, but Greg…just might be one of the few adults I’ve ever tackled,” LaBute wrote in the preface to the published version of the script.
“A boy grows up and becomes a man. I suppose every writer has one of those stories to tell, and this one is mine,” he adds.
“reasons to be pretty” doesn’t have what you could call an unalloyed “happy ending” but the emotional distance Greg travels from the first scene to the last is genuinely hopeful.
