Fat Pig by Neil LaBute

Directed by Callie Burk

Tom falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman.  Indeed, LaBute’s play would be little more than a romantic romp if it wasn’t for one, simple world in Helen’s character description…Fat. And that single world forces the trim and upwardly mobile Tom to endlessly explain and justify his new relationship to everyone around him; mitigating weight and romance and rationalizing love. Fat Pig is, simply put, a play about love and cowardice. LaBute doesn’t bog the play down with subjective drivel about what body types are “beautiful”; there’s no equivocation here. He goes right to the cancer: why won’t we love someone that others say we shouldn’t?

Solzhenitsn said, “It’s amazing how complete the delusion that beauty is goodness.” Sid Caesar said, “Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.” Neil LaBute has cleverly and hysterically married Alex and Sid, making Fat Pig the funniest curlicue about goodness you’ve seen in a long, long while.

“It’s theatre without Novocaine… an author with a truly unique voice.” –The Journal News