Neil LaBute is undeniably one of America’s most controversial and provocative playwrights, but for many he is also the voice of a generation—a generation tired of tedious, mediocre performances and thirsty for controversy and something a little more edgy.
LaBute strives for this edginess and aims, as he would say, to “get under people’s skin.”
Those who’ve seen his plays or films would give him an overwhelming vote of success.
So it’s funny that the Dallas Theater Center would choose to showcase a playwright whose plays have stoked a firestorm of controversy even, on occasion, in liberal-minded New York City. But maybe that’s the genius.
The funny thing is that it works, as evidenced in the number of sold-out performances of Neil LaBute’s The Beauty Plays at the AT&T Center for the Performing Arts’ new Wyly Theatre.
DTC is staging the three plays that compose this trilogy, “The Shape of Things,” “Fat Pig” and “reasons to be pretty,” in repertoire.
They began in early March and will continue to perform the three plays until May 23.
The subject matter of the trilogy is, naturally, beauty and the plays serve as LaBute’s examination and scathing critique of America’s obsession with physical beauty.
All three of the plays portray a different scenario in which we are forced to question our attitudes about self-image and how those attitudes affect not only those around us but our inner psyche as well.
The plays are being staged in the Wyly’s Studio Theatre, which seats only 100 people. This small space magnifies the occasional feelings of discomfort or disdain the subject matter invokes in the audience.
Reviewers have called “Fat Pig,” “uncomfortably personal,” possibly the exact feeling the directors of the three shows have meant to elicit from audience members.
Through this discomfort, the plays are meant to force each member of the audience to question previously held notions concerning what is beautiful and what should be beautiful. In that, as in most of his satirical critiques of society, LaBute is successful.
Theater-goers have nearly two more months to catch one or all of the plays in LaBute’s trilogy at the Dallas Theater Center, but purchasing tickets ahead of time is highly recommended as the shows sell out quickly.
