On the Boards This Week: August 23-29

Yet another new young theatre company begins its follow-up production to last summer's well-reviewed This is our Youth with a Neil LaBute play at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island tonight. Twenty-Something Theatre's delightful mandate is to "provide local audiences with the opportunity to see what the future artists of our theatre community have to offer". "Future" and "theatre community" together in one sentence makes me happy.

Marketing descriptions of The Shape of Things contain typical LaBute appellatives like "sexy", "dangerous", "seductive", and "shocking", so it's naturally attractive to intense young actors. The last time I saw this play, about the manipulations by a seductive art student of a shy, sexually inexperienced English Major at a provincial university, I wasn't particularly impressed with the production, so I'm looking forward to seeing what shape these guys can make of...things.

Photo courtesy of Twenty-Something Theatre