“Fat Pig”
Geffen Playhouse
May 5 ““ June 17
(Out Of 5)
If all art is meant to evoke a response, then Neil LaBute’s cynical play “Fat Pig” is a resounding success. As the audience flinched its way out of the tiny Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse, the mirror that LaBute reliably holds up to our wobbly sense of political correctness had us all questioning our smug conviction in our own social consciences.
That said, “Fat Pig” is a bit thin in terms of believability. Tom (Scott Wolf) is meant to be jarred out of his own biases regarding societal conventions of beauty when he falls in love with Helen (Kirsten Vangsness), who, while very pretty, also happens to be substantially overweight.
According to the press release, it’s Helen’s “wit, her intellect and her interests” that set her apart from Tom’s previous lady friend, the acerbic Jeannie from accounting (Andrea Anders), who is razor thin and still bitter about being dumped.
The problem is that while Helen is clearly a sweet woman who craves honesty and genuine connection, she’s more tragic than particularly funny. The fat jokes she compulsively tells at her own expense in an attempt to deflect the expected comments about her weight belie her claim that she’s “pretty all right with who I am now.”
Tom justifies his relationship with Helen to his work buddy, Carter (Chris Pine), a card-carrying misogynist and all-around jerk, by saying that he’s happy when he’s with her. This reasoning is continued in private moments with Helen, when Tom waxes poetic about how refreshing it is to feel so open and relaxed with another person. The bedroom scene is loaded with references to Helen’s beautiful lips and Tom’s inability to keep his hands off her, but due to a stunning lack of chemistry between the two lead actors, this alleged grand passion never quite comes across.
The true fire in the production exists at the office, in the vicious flare-ups among Tom, Jeannie and Carter.
It would be easy to hate Jeannie, who refuses to refer to Helen as anything other than Tom’s “fat bitch,” but it’s impossible to ignore her ragged heartbreak over Tom’s callous treatment of her. Anders brings a brittle vulnerability to her character’s rage, and she and Wolf generate sparks in every scene.
Pine’s Carter, though loathsome and vile, is undeniably hilarious and gets the most laughs from the audience. Carter ““ as the Greek chorus ““ is the one person on stage who appears to truly possess the courage to admit to his own failings, which is refreshing despite that he seems also to embrace his lack of moral fiber. The anecdote about his obese mother strikes the perfect balance between childhood shame, teenage angst and a refusal to back down from his conviction that if “you don’t like being fat, there’s a pretty easy remedy.”
Less convincing is his treatise to Tom on why dating a fat girl is guaranteed to cause problems: “People are not comfortable with difference. You know? Fags, retards, cripples. Fat people. Old people, even. They scare us or something.”
While undeniably true, this sort of bare-bones, honest self-reflection from someone as defiantly oafish as Carter seems less like character development and more like the playwright taking a moment to lay down the theme of the play for those of us too slow to catch on.
Some of the best moments on the cleverly modular and minimalist stage occur in silence. Director Jo Bonney creates the space for Vangsness’s most poignant expression of Helen, specifically her entrance while people are still finding their seats in the theater, not certain the play has even started. Buried in a book, blindly burrowing her way through an enormous, lonely lunch, Vangsness crystallizes Helen’s isolation and the solace she seeks within compulsive overeating. Also wrenching is her wordless search for the nonexistent bathing suit that will make her look skinny at Tom’s company beach party.
And while Wolf is raw and unflinching in Tom’s final disintegration, the play ends on an abrupt note, leaving more questions than answers.
Perhaps that’s the key to LaBute’s effectiveness as a writer. He’s stirred us all up. Now it’s our job to figure out the rest.