The Shape of Things: Let's Talk About Art, Baby

You know the thing that I really like about Neil LaBute? Love him or hate him, his plays get people talking about theatre, and in Vancouver outside of the two weeks of the Fringe Festival that's a good thing indeed. So the choice of LaBute's 2001 play The Shape of Things as Twenty-Something Theatre's second production may just get enough tongues wagging to fill some of the Waterfront Theatre's imposing 240 seats for the rest of the week.

Considered "controversial" because his work tends to dig for the inherent cruelty in ordinary folk, LaBute has a talent for conceptualizing great subject matter, but routinely falls short in achieving any real depth, his explorations land squarely on the nose of the matter. His great strength lies in his well-tuned ear for dialogue, his conversations are always whip smart and brassy, the kind of script young actors love to spit. The four actors that take on The Shape of Things handle his words with varied returns.

The lead role of Evelyn is handled marvelously by Julie McIsaac, this is her first role on a Vancouver stage and she is a welcome addition to the community. Simple and precise, her performance finally made this character make sense to me, which is that of a charming and brilliant young art student whose moral compass has been skewed by her perceptions of the job of art. It was easy to see how she is able to effect a Pygmalion-like metamorphoses on her socially awkward English-lit major boyfriend Adam, handled competently by Joel Sturrock. His transformation from schlub to stud happens believably, and avoids the pit-fall of broadly exaggerating the before and after, while still maintaining the character's culpability. This Adam clearly makes his own choices, therefore managing a sort of willing victimization, when his life inevitably falls apart he presents a tragic figure, but certainly not a eunuch.

The other pair of actors appeared to be performing in two different plays. Jon Lachlan Stewart - as Adam's abrupt buddy Phillip - is a gifted comic actor, as evidenced by his hilarious turn in Enlightenment Theatre's recent Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline. Here his broad-comedy pacing and oversized reactions indicated a lack of trust in being interesting just standing still and speaking the words, slowing his cues down a touch and listening more would have grounded him into his scenes. Phillip's girlfriend and Adam's dalliance Jenny is portrayed by Lisa Aasebo, whose sing-songy delivery is no doubt due to her background in musical theatre and which gave her performance a sit-com-like air, she nevertheless captured the sweet small-town charm demanded of her role.

Despite a too-literal and distracting set design, the art vs. ethics and attractiveness-of-confidence themes of The Shape of Things shine through, and the new producers at Twenty-Something have managed to create a piece of theatre worth talking about.

Photo credit: Twenty-Something Theatre