Fatale Attraction

Cruel, heartless men have been a specialty of playwright-filmmaker
Neil LaBute. In The Shape of Things, however, the shoe is on the
other foot, and it looks like a spike heel. LaBute burst upon the scene
in 1997 with the movie In the Company of Men, about two sadistic
misogynists. In The Shape of Things, the current show from Rarely
Done Productions at Jazz Central, 441 E. Washington St., he needs only
one formidable protagonist to show us that malevolence in female form is
an entirely different toxin. Not only is her beauty an irresistible
lure, but she can justify her cruelty as service to a higher ideal.

Not yet a household name, LaBute has become one of our leading
playwrights through a circuitous route. He was a professor in Fort
Wayne, Ind., when he made In the Company of Men, which helped him
to market the trunkful of stage plays he had been writing all along.
His ability to write dialogue that spikes our blood pressure marks him
as a man of the theater, no matter what his devotion to the silver
screen. The Shape of Things opened in 2001 at London’s Almeida,
one of the city’s most fashionable small theaters, and came to New York
City before being adapted in 2003 as a movie starring Rachel Weisz and
Paul Rudd, with LaBute directing. Given the intensity of the moral
pressure in speech after speech, the drama can gain nothing by being
opened up to real-life settings. The lines pack more punch on the
intimate stage of Jazz Central, where the speakers, sometimes in hoarse
stage whispers, are 10 feet away.

While lots of eye-opening things happen in two hours, such as having
performers change costumes—including undergarments—on stage, it’s the
long first scene that really grabs the audience. Even with the greatest
of playwrights, Shakespeare or Moliere, the exposition is the somewhat
boring part at the beginning you have to sit through to know where
characters came from and to pick up notes about what is to unfold. In The
Shape of Things tension begins in the very first lines. A woman and
a man begin a conversation, not so much a cute meeting as a baited
trap.

Evelyn (Erin Williamson) stands before a white chain in an art museum
in an unnamed college town somewhere in upstate New York, holding a can
of spray paint. Then she steps over the chain. A smiling, almost
apologetic guard, Adam (Nathan Young), approaches to say, “You’ve
stepped over the line.” She knows “the rules,” of course, and clearly
relishes the anxiety her threat of imminent vandalism presents. Although
unsmiling and jut-jawed, Evelyn brings a certain charm, spouting what
might or might not be sophomoric theories, such as “I hate art that is
false,” and “Moralists have no place in an art gallery.” We do have to
save such lines, though, because they mean something unanticipated but
specific by the time we get to the last scene.

We know Adam is a guard even though he wears a schlumpy jacket and
glasses instead of a uniform with a badge. Overly candid, Adam also
reveals that he works two jobs in part because he has such a bleak
social life. In time we see he’s flattered by the favor Evelyn begins to
pay him. But she never steps back over the chain, and he smiles while
admitting he might have to enforce the rules, but he never does. It
could be that he doesn’t want to nip a budding romance, or maybe he just
lacks the courage to do his job.

The romance indeed blossoms, so that three scenes later Adam, whom we
learn from a friend rarely scores with dates, is in bed with lovely
Evelyn. For some reason, she wants a video copy of their intimacy. Then
again, the relationship has made Adam look more like a stud. Evelyn has
obliged Adam to drop his glasses for contacts, improve his wardrobe,
work out in the gym, lose weight and, finally, reshape his nose.

We know something else is going on with all the allusions to Kafka,
the Pygmalion myth (not just George Bernard Shaw), Oscar Wilde’s Dorian
Gray and Shakespeare. The guy’s name is Adam, and Evelyn is a
variation on Eve. Further, her full name is Evelyn Ann Thompson, or the
initials E.A.T.

Changes in his appearance and lifestyle do not go over well with
Adam’s friend Philip (Darian Sundberg), who initially talks like a
sexist pig from an earlier LaBute play. He also vilifies Evelyn
personally and things she says, “At what kind of a Take Back the Night
rally did you find her?” LaBute and director Roy VanNorstrand know,
however, that our sentiments can be manipulated to circumscribe and even
reject Philip’s cautions. As theatergoers we’re used to pinning our
hopes on the lovers, redeemed loser Adam and driving visionary Evelyn.

When it comes to Philip’s fiancée, the beautiful but shy Jenny
(Marguerite Mitchell), Adam’s transformation has quite a different
effect. When she is alone with Adam in a coffee shop she confesses that
she has become attracted to him and can no longer resist and so kisses
him, which leads to a much warmer embrace. This does not mean Adam has
become a stud, however, as Jenny blabs about the episode to Philip, who
repeats the news to the deeply displeased Evelyn. The revelation also
signals that Evelyn has been changing Adam’s outward appearance while
paying little attention to what has been inside his more glamorous
exterior.

Although Evelyn’s name alludes to the Bible, her character has more
in common with female figures from pagan mythology, the alluring but
dangerous woman, from Ishtar of Babylon, the Greek Persephone to the
Celtic Queen Maeve. A previous Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area
Live Theater (SALT) award nominee who was last seen as the self-involved
principal in the Wit’s End Players comedy, The 25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee, Erin Williamson never looked like this
before. She makes Evelyn’s hard-driving confidence sexy, and allows that
the character’s inexplicable motive might actually be mysterious. Pity,
though, that LaBute did not cut her long speeches at the end.

Newcomer Nathan Young, a recent transplant from Denver, is too buff
and good-looking for Adam. Hard as he and director VanNorstrand work to
make him a dork in the first scene, he just looks like a romantic
leading man with glasses, bad hair and a bad suit. Young does, however,
successfully navigate the non-visible changes in Adam’s character. The
actor’s technique of lower projection so that we have to strain to hear
him works at the intimate jazz Central venue when we grasp what the
character is reluctant to reveal to himself.

Rarely Done’s The Shape of Things, together with Simply New
Theatre’s Fat Pig two weeks ago, completes an unanticipated Neil
LaBute mini-festival. This is a gutsy move for VanNorstrand to bring us
one of our leading playwrights, who is still an acquired taste.

This production runs through March 27. See Times Table for
information.