In reasons to be pretty [sic], writer Neil LaBute gives good argument. Set in a warehouse, the play starts with a well-performed (by Marin Ireland and Steven Pasquale), amusing filthy word-filled (by the wife) battle - a screaming, idiotic fight sprinkled with clever expressions. It's all very well directed by Terry Kinney, but it seems to me to be built on a sophistry: that saying the obvious truth about someone's looks will destroy a relationship. LaBute has the wife insist that saying that a woman in dreary clothes who wears no makeup is "regular" is a gross insult. I wouldn't want to spend ten minutes with this unpleasant woman. Ireland is so good an actress that the more she complained, the more I was repelled. I learned a long time ago to stay away from a chick as crazy as this with her idiotic list of complaints. This character is like the last stop in the fallout from the beauty culture of America. Okay, there are some clever lines, but who wants to spend time with these "lumpen proletariat" morons?
Thomas Sadoski and Piper Perabo are terrific as the other couple, and there's a really good physical fight scene, directed by Manny Siverio, with the two men, and Ireland turns quite attractive for the finish.
LaBute is a good writer; he has a gift for naturalistic dialogue that can be entertaining. I just don't have a lot of patience for people like this. Despite LaBute's claim in the program that he comes from a working-class background, and in spite of some absolutely believable perceptions and expressions by the characters, it seems to me to be an intellectual's riff on working-class conflict - a peek through the curtain into basically uninteresting lives spiced by a super-bright writer with a gift for words.
