Was lucky enough to get to see this play last night, and if you in town and have the means/desire, it is playing through July 5 at the Lucille Lortel and despite past doubts about LaBute, I say go. Without giving too much away, it is about beauty, and whether or not that concept is the thing that we should all choose to live our lives by. LaBute has this intense interest in aesthetics—the cloudy surface of people, the liminality of young love, how shallow it can be, how deep it can go.
The play is the third in a trilogy on appearances, and while this may seem like a treacly concept to base three whole plays on, I can’t actually think of anything more crucial than exploring beauty and how we acheive or possess it, and how much that matters in the end. It’s what most of us think about all day, whether or not we admit it. What “Reasons to be Pretty” claims is that looks are such a small factor, or should be, in our interactions with people, but still, they add up to everything in the whole world. To be thought beautiful, to think that of someone, to say it out loud to them, that’s what growing up is. We live in an image-obsessed culture, and can’t escape it, so we have to somehow learn to live within it and protect ourselves. Oftentimes that takes another person—someone to look at your face and find in it something electric. It’s never about the face, and it’s all about the face.
Anyway, see it if you can. Alison Pill is super great in it as well, and is clearly on her way to transcending her work in “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” by year’s end.
