The Reasoning Behind LaBute's "reasons"

Neil LaBute’s “reasons to be pretty” offers unattractive commentary about our destructive superficial obsessions.

The final installment in a triptych (following “Fat Pig” and “The Shape of Things”), ‘reasons’ not only addresses our fixation with physical beauty, but also our inability to be honest about it… with ourselves and with each other. A new Paul Malone-directed SpeakEasy production of the multi-Tony-nominated play opened Friday night at the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion.

The show begins in the trenches straight away as a young couple, Greg and Steph (Andy Macdonald and Angie Jepson), engage in a nasty go-round. The issue? Something Greg supposedly said to his bro-pals about Steph’s face being ‘regular,’ which has gotten back to her; a ball of festering insecurity, her rage is unstoppable. Actually, the way in which she spits expletives and carries on resembles a textbook case of Borderline personality disorder. The argument paints Greg in a sympathetic light while Steph comes across as irrational, oversensitive and unyielding.

Greg and Steph’s romance is finished from that point forward—over an issue of semantics. But in the end it isn’t so much what was said but, rather, how it was heard that dictates Greg’s meaning.

“This shouldn’t be happening… I care about you,” he says to her. And yet, Steph’s self-esteem is so badly damaged by a culture that values generic good looks over character, she can’t seem to wrap her head around the idea that maybe Greg was actually singing the praises of her understated beauty with his off-handed comment. She can't hear him.

On the other end of LaBute’s equation is an obnoxiously good looking couple, Kent and Carly (Burt Grinstead and Danielle Muehlen). It was Carly who informed Steph of Greg’s comment and as the play moves along, her motivations come into question since it’s clear that her relationship is built of superficial means.

In the end, both relationships dissolve due to a perceived pressure to ‘be pretty.’ Kent—a classic mimbo, confidently played by Grinstead, a Worcester native—ends up having an affair with some trophy-gal we never see (ironically, the one whose face prompted Greg to call Steph’s mug ‘regular’).

At numerous points in the dialogue Kent's narcissism and unchecked womanizing become deafening. “Women are like athletes,” he says during one exchange, “a couple good years and then their knees go,” he concludes, making it pretty easy for us to enjoy his receipt of ‘just desserts’ toward the play’s end.  

The contrast between the two couples is plenty thought-provoking. Greg and Steph seem oddly mismatched and yet what they had was built from genuine love. Kent and Carly, meanwhile, make a much more obvious pair, but it becomes apparent that lust is really the one calling the shots. Neither scenario, however, is any match for the drive to try and find something ‘better.’

The production value of the SpeakEasy’s ‘Reasons’ is minimal, but the company does an awful lot with a little, making excellent use of the industrial warehouse portion of the set (where three of the four characters work) as a transformative zone wherein time speeds up.

The actual set changes brilliantly tie into pieces of the plot. For example, Steph completely deconstructs the bedroom she shared with Greg while packing her bags to leave him, angrily shoving the bed off to the side. After another confrontational scene, Kent hurls several pieces of furniture out of view.

There are some issues with the tricky dialogue that will hopefully iron out as the engagement, which runs through April 2, moves along. LaBute has his characters engaged in argumentative vignettes that require demanding, rapid-fire delivery and can’t afford to seem even slightly canned – it’s a tightrope walk.

Finding a natural rhythm that makes the dialogue believable is the biggest challenge facing this cast.

The SpeakEasy production of Neil LaBute's "reasons to be pretty," directed by Paul Melone, plays at the BCA Calderwood Pavilion through April 2. Call (617) 933-8600 for more information.