Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233744 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-05
• Released on: 2005-02-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review

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Customer Reviews

Labute is an amazing playwright
My reaction to this play reminded me a lot of my reaction to "The Shape of Things." It was: Wow!

I've read almost all of Labute's material, so maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised, but I really got into the story. I loved the dialogue, I loved the tension, and I loved how Labute builds and build--how well-crafted his plays are.

I really don't want to give away much of the story. So, all I'll say is that in the first few pages the main character comes back into his childhood town, happens to meet a girl that he knew 12 years ago, flirts with her, and decides to rent a room from her and her husband.

This play uses the N word a few times. And, as with all of Labute's plays, I recommend that you read the introduction after you've read the play.

Not His Best Work
I have been a fan of LaBute for many years now and have yet to dislike any of his work, but this is not a very good play. When I read a play, I try to envision how it would play out on stage. This script has little potential for making a good production. I guess this may be why it was published before anyone tried to mount a production of it. I really feels unfinished. The characters change their intentions throughout the play in an attempt to create twists and turns in the plot. To me it all seems pretty contrived. Since the plot is pretty much a mess, LaBute uses the convention of the main character breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. This results in some good monologues (possible audition material), but the play itself just kind of fizzles out into these kind of monologues instead of having a real arc to the story. The dialogue is still good and there are some interesting scenes, but all-in-all it's just not a very good play. If you are a fan of LaBute and have read/seen all of his other work it may be of interest. If you are new to LaBute try The Shape of Things or The Mercy Seat.

Neil LaBute's America
In this play, Neil Labute anatomizes a contemporary "mixed" marriage, in the process telling us much about American love and friendship in their current forms. Though somewhat similar in its dramatic action to the romantic triangle of "In The Company Of Men," this newer work as a drama of ideas is infinitely richer. What LaBute's plot reveals throughout is that the individualism, on which so many of us pride ourselves, in its present tattered shape can in no sense be confused with mature personhood. Absent from the world of the play is any evenly diffused, widely accepted, high-minded code of manners which might mould, encourage, and restrain certain behavior patterns. Instead, each of the three characters is largely his or her own carver. Left mainly with themselves to fall back upon, the three are, in fact, ignorant of being the most miserable of creatures. Their highest idea of realizing their humanity involves various acts, real or feigned, of "defiance." In standing out by offending others, then, they chiefly live, and move, and have their being.
The few remnants of older and questionable community standards that do appear involve, first, the endorsement of working hard so as to become rich and arouse the envy of one's neighbors, and, second, the sad heritage of racism which still infects blacks and whites alike. Thus, as his m.o., Cody, the hard-working husband in the "mixed" marriage, instinctively plays the race card. Similarly, the play's narrator, Man, finds lurking just under the surface of his "educated" self an abundance of racial slurs at the ready. Each of these characters, as the closing scene reveals, even when physically together, is shockingly and sadly "alone."

Labute uses with considerable cleverness the dramatic device of a narrator who addresses us directly to put the audience in the same position toward the truth of situations that the characters often find themselves in. Forced upon us then is an awareness of the frequent opacity of one person to another at any given moment in life. I don't think the play is suggesting there is no truth in a specific situation, for if that were so it would be impossible for a character to lie. And LaBute's guys are both pretty accomplished liars. Rather the telling dramatic point, for audience and characters alike, is that in a given situation we ourselves may easily be deceived. In "Othello," Shakespeare uses Iago as liar in similar fashion. Audiences tend to take his opening remarks about bookish Cassio and ignoble Othello as true, only to be forced to radically revise what they've too quickly swallowed once these characters themselves appear on stage. In both plays, we tend not to find the characters who've been misled or lied to improbably gullible, since we may ourselves have rushed to judgment after having been told not truth but only a possibility or even a self-serving whopper.
The play, as all LaBute's works, has commendable realistic and frequently witty dialogue as well as rich literary allusiveness. "Othello,""The Scarlet Letter," and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" are mentioned in significant ways. Of all LaBute's work, this play is probably the saddest. It's vision puts me in mind of Dr. Johnson's observation that life everywhere is basically the same, featuring much to endure and little to enjoy. For Johnson, the only balm in our present situation was the comfort of love and friendship. Labute's vision seems far less consoling, for the characters in his play miss Johnson's insight, unfortunately seeing love as something one grows tired of and rightly dismisses and friendship as a means of competition.