POKE AT A 'PIG'

posted by James Reel

    In the current Tucson Weekly, I review a late-night production of Neil LaBute’s rather slim Fat Pig:

    Back in his student days, Neil LaBute must have heard the term "theater of cruelty" and decided to make it his own: not the violent shattering of false reality that Antonin Artaud had in mind, but something more literal, more petty and personal. LaBute has devoted his career to showing us what nasty little assholes we are.
    LaBute is best known for his quietly vicious first two films, In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, but he's also quite an active playwright. By LaBute's standards, Fat Pig--the current late show at Live Theatre Workshop--is a tender romance, but LaBute isn't really cut out for a play revolving around two nice people. Malignant forces do go to work on our hero and heroine, but the whole thing seems just a bit soft. LaBute doesn't bite into his hero's soul; he just gives it a good, hard gumming.