Something surprising has happened to Neil LaBute in the last five years: He seems to have met some people. Not necessarily anyone specific. Just people, whose appetites and impulses are selfish, sure, but not malevolent to the point of abstraction, like so many who populate his earlier oeuvre of men behaving badly. “Regular,” you might call them, to use the baby-shampoo-mild insult that brings regular-guy Greg so much misery in “Reasons to Be Pretty,” the initially shaky, ultimately rewarding dramedy that’s landed for what could be another long engagement at the LaBute-loving Studio Theatre.
If you go
‘Reasons to Be Pretty’
Where: Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW
When: Through May 2, see Web site for performance times.
Info: studiotheatre.org; Performance time is approximately 2 hours, 10 minutes, including one intermission. Contains copious profanity.
Billed as the closing chapter of a trilogy that includes the substantial “The Shape of Things” and the more lightweight “Fat Pig,” both of which got comfy at Studio in 2002 and 2006, respectively, “Reasons to Be Pretty” purports to continue its precursors’ investigations of physical beauty, once again prodding and twisting the loyalties among two women and two men. And for a restless first pair of scenes — another protracted, profane screaming match, another depressing conversation between our nominal hero and an at-work frenemy who seems too venal and stupid to function in any nonfictional environment — it feels like nothing so much as a rehash of ideas LaBute has mined more profitably in the past. But what gradually reveals itself to be the play’s true subject is the problem of fidelity. Once that comes into focus, David Muse’s production veers into fresher, more fertile dramatic terrain.
This might be the first LaBute trial in which someone evolves as a result of all this suffering. Ryan Artzberger’s wrenching performance as Greg, a bookworm who stacks crates for a living, makes you feel every stinging instant of his crawl toward self-awareness. Even after his own longtime girlfriend has left him (referring to her as “regular” was the final straw) he finds his misery compounded by his failure to stand up to his misbehaving pal.
Artzberger is the best thing about the show, though Margot White’s wounded turn as Steph, the face who’s launching a thousand F-bombs at Greg as the play opens, is nearly as fine. White lets herself be shrill and bullheaded in the early going — her public reading of Greg’s physical and sexual shortcomings in a mall food court is where the play finally shudders to life — and in two scenes bookending the play’s second half, she’s conflicted and vulnerable. We’re not privy to the tonal gradations of her change the way we are Greg’s, but her journey is just as convincing.
Alas, as jerk-du-jour Kent, Thom Miller is another half-sketched cartoon of expansive male boorishness. If he’d half-smile when he observes that a comely co-worker is “23, just starting to fade,” you might believe him. The rock songs that blare then abruptly terminate between scenes are another device that seems tired. But Muse does this sometimes airless material a favor by having anonymous guys in coveralls wander the hallway behind the scenes set in a warehouse break room, a small but welcome touch that opens up the world of the story.
Muse can’t fix everything — the confusion over how old these characters are supposed to be becomes a particular distraction — but he massages a literal schoolyard showdown into something more violent, and more credible than we’d have any reason to expect, without sacrificing any humor. That balancing act is “Reason” enough to be … patient.
