Who wrote the Tony Award nominated play, “Reasons To Be Pretty”?”
Neil LaBute wrote the play “Reasons to be Pretty.” It is directed by Terry Kinney. A review by the New York Times about the play reports: “Reasons to Be Pretty” is less condemning than questioning. And it’s shot through with compassion for four young working-class friends and lovers who are starting to realize that they are trapped in dead-end lives. The four immensely talented cast members — Piper Perabo, Thomas Sadoski, Pablo Schreiber and Ms. Pill — respond to this newly found empathy with some of the most sensitively shaded performances in town.
reasons to be pretty is a play by Neil Labute that centers on four young working class friends and lovers who become increasingly dissatisfied with their dead-end lives and each other. Following Shape of Things and Fat Pig, it is the final installment of a trilogy that focuses on modern day obsession with physical appearance. Produced by MCC Theater and directed by Terry Kinney, the play premiered at the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater in Greenwich Village on June 2, 2008 and ran through July 5. The cast included Piper Perabo, Pablo Schreiber, Alison Pill, and Thomas Sadoski. Ben Brantley of the New York Times thought the play “has an adolescent awkwardness at times that is the opposite of the contrived jigsaw-puzzle precision associated with Mr. LaBute… The relatively easygoing sprawl of reasons to be pretty allows his characters to talk naturally and at leisure as they ponder their own often less-than-pretty natures. In the course of these conversations, you realize anew what a
Critics have dubbed him a misanthrope — a person who hates humankind. That’s a rather daunting title to have in the back of one’s head when getting ready to call playwright, screenwriter and director Neil LaBute, nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play for “Reasons to Be Pretty.” A graduate of Brigham Young University, LaBute has ruffled more than a few feathers with his body of work that tends to explore the dark underbelly of human emotion and behavior.
