April 8, 2009

'reasons to be pretty' Broadway review roundup

Playwright Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty opened on Broadway last week, impressing some of the big-name critics while others were not amused.

The play — about perceptions of beauty — stars Marin Ireland, Steven Pasquale, Piper Perabo and Thomas Sadoski. Terry Kinney directs.

“reasons to be pretty” has an open-ended run at the Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St., map. Regular tickets are priced $31.50 to $111.50. Premium seats are $176.50 and $226.50. Student rush tickets for $26.50 are sold at the box office two hours prior to each performance. Tickets are 50 percent off through April 12, with seats as low as $16.50.

The “reasons to be pretty” reviews:
New York Times - “Making his Broadway debut with a revised (and much improved) version of a play seen off Broadway last year, Mr. LaBute has exchanged misanthropy for empathy, reaping unexpected dividends.”

Variety - “Nobody’s going to call Neil LaBute a redemptive playwright, and even in this reflective mood, he’s not exactly forgiving about men’s failings and women’s weaknesses. But there’s compassion and even tenderness running through this play that make it one of his best.”

USA Today - “No contemporary writer has more astutely captured the brutality in everyday conversation and behavior; that kind of insight requires sensitivity and soul-searching.”

Wall Street Journal - “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it does as well this time around, for what we have here is a kinder, gentler Neil LaBute, one who lets his hapless protagonist partway off the hook instead of letting him twist and turn all night long. That’s what makes “reasons to be pretty” suitable for uptown consumption. It’s Mr. LaBute’s first semioptimistic play — which turns out not to be a good thing.”

Daily News - “LaBute (“In the Company of Men,” “Fat Pig”) is known for misogynistic men and 11th-hour twists, but in his Broadway debut, he rises above the formulaic to craft a play that’s perceptive and believable.”

Post - “Underneath the profanity, hot-button issues and general hostility lurks a fairly conventional treatment of well-trodden themes. LaBute’s plays would rock only the tipsiest boat — which says more about American theater than it does about him.”

Newsday - “The director, a founding member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, wrings unbridled violent physicality from the hardworking cast. But for a guy who reads Poe and Hawthorne on his lunch break, Greg really should be deeper than this.”

NewYorkology - “Marin Ireland’s Steph is the girlfriend he doesn’t mean to mortally offend, and her nuanced performance is both funny and touching. She does an admirable job of making the least realistic character a nuanced person you grow to like.”

Associated Press - “The complicated, often explosive relationships between men and women are a source of eternal, often contrary fascination for Neil LaBute, and they have been superbly realized in “reasons to be pretty,” his most compassionate, appealing work to date.”

Bloomberg - “The dialogue couldn’t be snappier and psychologically more astute, as partings prove as fraught as pairings, with the bitterest resentment harboring nostalgic yearnings for reconciliation. “

Time Out - “LaBute takes the old saw that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and gives it new teeth.”

amNewYork - “When the play premiered Off-Broadway last summer, every character delivered at least one confessional monologue to the audience. Now that the monologues have been scrapped, the play moves faster, but the supporting characters now feel far less complex and interesting.”

New Yorker - “The women in Kent’s life get turned on by their own moral superiority as much as they do by his slablike fingers slapping their fannies. He’s a cuter Andrew Dice Clay, and, the night I attended the show, women laughed as uproariously at his sexism as they did at Steph’s cluelessness. It’s as if LaBute’s—by now canned and adolescent—“transgressive” point of view were what audiences needed in order to feel anarchic, to shed the boring safety of their lives.”

Read more reviews at Critic-O-Meter

April 8, 2009 8:22 PM in Broadway, Cheap Stuff, Midtown

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