Preview
THE SHAPE OF THINGS
Alberta Theatre Projects
Starring Meg Roe, Harry Judge, Renée Amber and Rylan Wilkie
Written by Neil LaBute
Directed by Bob White
Runs until May 1
Martha Cohen Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Not known for treating delicate subjects with a soft hand, Neil LaBute has quickly become one of the most controversial voices in contemporary American film and theatre. So it’s appropriate that Alberta Theatre Projects, whose mandate is to present challenging new work, should choose to tackle one of LaBute’s most recent offerings, The Shape of Things.
Bob White, ATP’s artistic director and a champion of contemporary playwriting, is directing LaBute’s play as the closing production of the company’s current season.
"I’m interested, these days, in plays that are actually about moral issues – about how we live our lives and what choices we make," says White. "As I’ve grown older and more experienced, it is the bigger issues that I find more appealing and it’s the moral struggle at the centre of The Shape of Things that I find just fascinating."
In LaBute’s scenario, Adam (Harry Judge), a college student, meets the lovely art major Evelyn (Meg Roe). Soon after they start dating, Adam’s life is transformed. He falls in love and begins a steady path to "self-improvement." Adam’s friends Jenny (Renée Amber) and Phil (Rylan Wilkie) take notice and, while slightly skeptical, they, too, become part of Adam’s evolution. But, typical of LaBute’s work, all is not as it seems and the plot leads to twists that White believes ATP audiences will find surprising and provocative.
Bouncing back and forth between stage and screen, LaBute first captured people’s attention as the writer-director of the film In the Company of Men – a devastating look at the male potential for cruelty that exploded onto the scene seven years ago.
"I took a negative reaction to that movie and said, ‘Here’s a writer that troubles me, so I’m not interested in him,’" admits White. "But as I started to read his work, the plays specifically, I thought, ‘Here is someone who is really taking on contemporary issues and specifically the relationships between men and women.’"
Ultimately, LaBute, not unlike David Mamet, is very economical in his writing and gives his audience – theatre or film – what they need at just the right time. Dramatic tension, humour, rhythm and character revelation are all carefully timed to bring the best possible result.
"We’re looking for intimacy and we’re looking for surprise and those things that you can do so well in film," says White of his work with the show’s four young actors. "There’s just so much jammed into the play that there isn’t a second going by where you’re not struck by something or (find) something to dig further into."
The play juxtaposes many dualities among its characters throughout its 90-minute running time. One couple is just beginning their relationship, while another is dissolving theirs. This, combined with hidden agendas, questions of fidelity, and possibly even a love triangle or two, leads White to describe the play as, on one level, "a kind of soap opera" that the entire creative team had fun playing with. "It’s about love relationships and we want to direct the audience’s attention to that until the great reversal at the end."
Who are you? What are your values? What’s important to you? LaBute poses these and many other questions through the not-so-politically-correct, though very human, characters of his play.
"One of the things The Shape of Things talks about in extremely interesting ways is that we’re so driven by fashion, television, by the media," says White. "To be beautiful, you have to drink the right coffee and wear the right clothes and be in a certain kind of physical shape and that’s where happiness lies." While certainly not a new observation, it is the manner in which LaBute presents this pursuit of happiness that is sure to cause more than a few jaws to drop.
"At ATP, it will be confronting an audience that is not quite prepared for the style of the play and the argument about it, and I think for that reason it will be provocative," says White. But he is up for a little boat-rocking. "After all," he says, "that’s what we’re here to do." |
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