New Review: Reasons to be Pretty

Reviewed for Back Stage.

Here's a tease:

Reasons to Be Pretty caps a trilogy of plays by Neil LaBute that are thematically slippery. While The Shape of Things and Fat Pig anatomize male-female dynamics as pathways to inevitable betrayals between the sexes, in Reasons the central betrayal comes just before the play begins, not at the end. And while all the characters in Reasons stab each other in the back and heart, none of it surprises or enlightens. It's finally as if LaBute is admitting that his plays demonize women and this is his way of making amends. Of the four monologues in the play — one for each character and all unnecessary — the last literally tells us that we ought to be nicer to each other.

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