Excerpted from The Toledo Blade, Toledo, Ohio, Thursday, June 23, 2005
Village Players take on sophisticated summer fare
By NANCIANN CHERRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Julie Zatko doesn't like to play it safe, at least not all the time.
The young Village Players director, who just wound up the playhouse's season with the acerbic yet touching On Golden Pond, enjoys giving summer audiences a taste of something different.
Last year, it was the satire of popular culture Psycho Beach Party; this year it's Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, which opens tonight.
"Summer is my chance to do something 'out there,' " she said, defining 'out there' as something riskier, with less general appeal than most shows produced by community theaters during their main season.
The hope is that a different audience will be attracted by the play, which would have a dual benefit: The first is to entice nontraditional theatergoers into becoming regulars, the second is to expand the variety of shows that theaters are willing to produce.
LaBute is known for exploring the messiness of adult relationships in shows such as In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, both of which had a distinctly misogynistic bent.
"Consider My Fair Lady or The Taming of the Shrew, in which men manipulate women, forcing them to become what they want," Zatko said. "[The Shape of Things] asks what happens if the tables are turned."
After meeting her in a museum, Adam falls head over heels in love with Evelyn (yes, the choice of names is deliberate), and the pair quickly become a couple, getting together often with Adam's roommate, Phil, and his girlfriend, Jenny.
Over the course of the play, the latter couple begin to notice that Adam has lost weight and made other changes in his appearance and behavior.
Is he trying to please Evelyn, has she demanded such changes as a condition of their relationship, or are Jenny and Phil simply projecting their own insecurities?
LaBute isn't always easy to watch, but he is a master at exploring the games people play, the lies we tell each other, the human obsession with surface appearances.
"You can see things in Phil and Jenny's relationship that are OK, but the same things aren't OK in Adam and Eve," Zatko said. "The play forces you to ask why."
Evelyn is played by Michelle Sullivan, the fiercely compelling young actress who owned the stage in the Toledo Repertoire Theatre's production of Proof. Adam is played by Players' newcomer Nick Kubiak, who has appeared in shows at St. Francis DeSales High School.
Ben Lumbrezer is Phil, and Brie-Anne Murphy is Jenny. Lumbrezer is a Village Players veteran, and Murphy has appeared in several productions at the University of Toledo.
With LaBute's ear for modern dialogue and his occasionally sex-charged situations, his plays are definitely geared to young adults and older audiences.
"Is it funny?" Zatko considered the question.
"I guess it depends on your sense of humor."
"The Shape of Things" runs at 8 p.m. today and tomorrow and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday in the Village Players Theater, 2740 Upton Ave. Tickets are $8 at the door. Information: 419-472-6817.
Last Modified: 02/25/06