(l-r Michael Daniel Murphy, Sandra Lee, Yanik Ethier-Phillip, Josyln Rogers)
The Play's Not the Thing
Labute's The Shape of Things may add you to his detractors
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
The main problem is the play....among many problems.
Fact is, xposed—now staging Neil Labute's The Shape of Things at 4001 Berri—did not have a good opening night. It seemed that many of their "friends" were pissed drunk or just noisy or maybe they're fucktards all the time. But with the banging of doors and dropping of drinks which accompanied the first and most delicate scene of the play, the evening was not off to a roaring start. The play was under-rehearsed, for another thing, and rhythms were aimless for most of the first half. Too, the second half was not helped by the intermission (which saw audience and at least one critic flee)—the pace which was just starting to build was broken and took 15 minutes of part two to recover.
