Customer Reviews

Fat Pig: A Play

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This play can really hit home if you have ever dated outside of your league. The pressure to date some one your friends approve of weighs heavy on the character Tom. Societal pressure to be perfect and be with the perfect person is explored and so worth your time and money to go on the journey. I completely recommend this play!

As an overweight woman, this play truly struck home for me. As an actress, it inspired me to continue on with the themes of this play and to write my own one woman show about obesity for women. Excellent play! Must read.

I saw this play in the theatre before I read it. And I read it after I saw the play because I am always curious about how stories translate from one medium to another, in this case from the page to the stage. Though, unlike a novel that becomes a movie, a play is written with the intent to stage but a lot of what happens in the theatre involves more than the writing. Actors' interpretation, director's vision, lighting, set design, etc. - all of the colloborative theatrical arts play a role in how I experience a play.

So.

I wanted to see how the WRITING would stand on its own.

I think part of the reason why I give this play three stars is not because Labute didn't deliver on the page necessarily. To be fair, a lot of the shock value of the play's conclusion (as in final scene) was gone. I left the theatre with my mouth hanging open, deeply disturbed on a variety of levels (in that thought-provoking indie-artsy way). So when I read the play, I already knew what was coming and so I was reading less for the story and more for the execution.

I think it works. Though I will say, on the page, Fat Pig got a bit tiring when the lovers were not in a scene. The supporting characters' viscious shenanigans begin to wear page after page, like a high pitched siren. It's still kinda tough even when humans are actually speaking these lines,but at least there is something to look at to break the monotony.

Would I have given this, say a four or five star rating had I read the play first vs. seeing it? Well, I'll never know. But I'm thinking that what makes the play work is it's shock value. And once you know the "punchline," it doesn't have staying power strictly as writing - though it absolutely does thematically. I could, by contrast, read "Streetcar Named Desire" a million times and still find something juicy to savor each time, even though I know the play's shocking conclusion. Can't say the same thing about READING this play.

Now, LaButes's play The Shape of Things - did work for me as a multiple read AFTER I saw the play (as a movie)I would give that one five stars. I think the characters were more fleshed and therefore more engaging.

STILL. I love this guy. I mean, you know, his writing. And if you can't see Fat Pig on stage, then YEAH, read it.

I didn't like this play as much as I thought I would. I liked the concept, but it seemed like LaBute struggled to make a whole play out of it. I felt bogged down in repetition and wasted time as the characters uttered one unfinished sentence, one unfinished thought, after another. I spent much of my life as one of "the fat girls," and I kind of wish LaBute had done better by us. That said, however, the play does take on an important but touchy subject with considerable honesty.

This play is another one of Neil LaBute's dark comedies that asks us to question our views on physical beauty. GREAT PLAY.

Some may dissagree, but I found this play very brave. It talks about the stuff that people think but don't discuss openly. I really fell in love with the lead female character and the neurotic x-girlfriend. I laughed outloud. I especially love the line. " Well, if I'm crazy you made me that way!"

It's funny and yet heartbreaking. I found the male characters really screwed up. But then, perhaps that's because I'm a female. After reading this play I went and saw it performed and loved it. This is a great play to perform, I'd imagine as LaBute provides you with so much.

FAT PIG was astounding to watch. It was like standing on the side of a freeway watching an accident happen and being powerless to stop it. Ashley Atkinson is one of the bravest actresses in NYC for tackling the extremely difficult role of Helen. I didn't get to see Jeremy Piven, but Steven Pasqual was amazing. Kudos to Andrew McCarthy and Jessica Capshaw in very difficult roles. Keep in mind, this version of the play is NOT the final version. The script has been changed and, in many ways, for the better. Still -- this version is a great read and well worth the purchase for actors needing tricky scene work. Neil LaBute is always worth a read or a watch. I only wish he would turn this into a film like he has a few others.

I bought the book considering the reviews on it, but I found it very boring and disappointing. I want to believe that the play made a big difference on scene because just reading was dull. Don't waste your money on this.

Evelyn Waugh said years ago he revered the Church because its high standards "kept him human." Neil LaBute shows us a world several rungs below Waugh's. His characters lack not just a Church, but even a secular Code of Manners. Therefore, they lack awareness of any obligatory rules of mutual respect which might be capable of teaching them, the males in particular, possible ways to a fully human adulthood. LaBute's subject, once again, is the American boy-man, a benighted, largely unformed character, of whom in this play he gives us two examples. The first, Carter, thinks he's being witty when in fact he's merely buffoonish and impertinent. The second, Tom, openly admits to an easy complicity with injustice owing to a personal lack of fortitude and general weakness of character. The Knights of the Round Table or St.Thomas More, both alluded to in the play, of course have long lost any appeal to such guys as models. Carter and Tom are pretty much on their own; without profound guidelines their presumed freedom has them bowing to the whims of the moment or to pressure from the current in-crowd. Unfit for loyalty, much less marriage, they are, in following uncritically their untutored impulses, by and large just another species of serial fornicator skilled at playing and then betrayal in what they term, in contemporary parlance, "relationships." They are each, in other words, our generation's average sensual man. Tom, in his ignorance and weakness, is the far less satanic of the two. In fact, he is not so much a grand theatrical sinner in the mode of Iago or Tartuffe, as he is, embarrassingly, just a mediocrity. LaBute, nevertheless, has a bit of a soft spot in his heart for this character, recognizing in him, when he weeps, perhaps a flash of that triple betrayer Simon Peter at his lowest point.

The principal woman of the play, the clever, obese heroine Helen is clearly living in the wrong century. She'd have been much happier in the time of the fat woman as ideal, the time of Rubens or Rembrandt, where, far from being ridiculed, she might have posed as a model. Though the most insightful character in the play, she asks repeatedly for honesty from her suitor, the good-looking, non-heroic Tom, and she finally gets it - unfortunately. While he cares for her as much as he might for anyone besides himself, in his own words he is at best "a weak and fearful person," so despite his tears, he tells her what she least hopes to hear. Surely Jane Austen must have had some early 19th century boy-man in mind when she quipped that in social life "honesty can be an easily overrated virtue."

How many actors does this play require? Does the character Helen have any monologues? Any answers would be extremely helpful.