I think we all have some playwright that, despite the constant productions of his or her work, we just don't get. For me, that playwright is Neil LaBute. MCC produced a new play of his every season for the past five seasons and the Public had him on their roster for the past two seasons. And not only do all of his plays get produced, but for some reason his plays attract stars like flies caught on a strip of sticky paper. So someone tell me what I am missing? Each of his plays that I've seen is basically the same - we get a picture of a man doing some loathsome act (in "Mercy Seat" it was a man trying to decided whether he survived on 9-11 or whether to stay with his mistress; in "Fat Pig," it's a man trying to deal with the fact that he's dating a fat woman), and then we get some random tacked on twist ending, stuck on there just for the sake of having a twist ending. His plays just seem designed to offend his audience as much as possible - these characters rarely have any redeeming values - and really, if the plays ever really have a point (other than "Men suck"), well, they're lost on me.
Anyway, the LaBute play I saw this evening was his pedophile play: "In a Dark Dark House." I probably would have liked the play a little less if I hadn't already seen David Harrower's "Blackbird," a far better and far more chilling play on a similar subject matter - they're both about pedophiles, but LaBute's pedophile play has the obligatory ludicrous series of plot twists in the third scene. The first two scenes were fine - not particularly interesting, but not terrible - that was basically the "Blackbird"-lite part of the play. Then we get the third and final scene, and it's basically a 'and then I did this, and if you think that's shocking, well I also did this, and if you think that's shocking, well I also did this' (and so on and so on) - it's just one pointless added layer after the other. And then, so the audience doesn't leave flush the play from their memories as soon as they leave the theatre, he gives us a final encounter that's just ambiguous enough to have the audience scratching their heads and wondering what we just missed and why there is this hugging and crying going on. And so the play ends and everyone turns to the person next to them and they say "Did you understand the ending," and they bandy about theories about what happened, and so the play lives on in the memories of the audience. (For my part, based on eavesdropping on people around me and then pondering to myself on my way home I think I figured out what happened at the end - but I can't really say I understand why what happened happened).
So... while "In a Dark Dark House" is the first play in a while that had me leave the theatre actually thinking about the play and what happened in it, and I can't say I necessarily disliked the play, because it did hold my interest - in the end it was just typical LaBute with everything I've come to expect from one of his plays. I notice, shockingly enough that MCC is not producing one of his plays next season. Not that I really ever like MCC's non-LaBute offerings, but I can't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
As for other theatre...
I went to see "110 in the Shade" again. I have to say I enjoyed it even more the second time. I recall merely liking it the first time, but I really loved it this second time. If you haven't seen it yet, go. And if you have, why not see it again?
The sole reason I went to see "The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero" was because it's playing at the DR2 which is close to my apartment. That probably wasn't a very good reason to see a show, but I was feeling lazy that day. "The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero" was a fitting punishment for my laziness. It was truly dreadful. The first half was passable fluff entertainment, but it's charm soon wore off, especially when it started to get serious and it just became a bore and a chore to sit through - all the way to its jaw-droppingly bizarre and awful ending.
I have to say that I was really moved by Sarah Ruhl's "eurydice." I can imagine people finding it dense or pretentious - it's definitely not an easy listening-type drama, with much of the dialogue verging on a sort of poetry, but I found it really fascinating and will admit to being surprisingly teary-eyed at the end. It's one of those really avant-garde productions: there is a Greek chorus of stones (yes, stones) and the lord of the Underworld is a child riding around on a bicycle. Oh, and the set is really beautiful. Anyway, I recommend seeing it, though I admit it's not for everyone (the always amusing John Simon said "I have never had a worse time than during these 90 interminable, intermissionless minutes of a play that, were it a lamp post, dogs would shun.").
