Trapped in the Gaze — Good acting, curious script at Mad Horse's 'Reasons To Be Pretty'

It all started when Greg (Jake Cote) made an offhand remark to his friend and co-worker Kent (Kelsey Anderson-Taylor) about the face of his girlfriend Steph (Marie Stewart-Harmon), who then heard about it from Kent’s wife Carly (Allison McCall). Maybe Steph’s face isn’t as hot as the face of the new woman at work, is what Greg tells Steph he said to Kent. “Maybe it’s just regular.” And so begins a war, in Neil LaBute’s Reasons to be Pretty, at Mad Horse. Christopher Price directs a show whose agile cast brings sympathetic nuance to LaBute’s rather ham-handed script about the male gaze, ideals of beauty, and the effects of these on both women and men.

Reasons to be Pretty starts with profanity-riddled rage and threats to housepets. “‘Please’ is shit,” barks Steph at Greg’s feeble, confused attempts at damage control. “‘Please’ is something you crap in your pants.” And later, more candidly and to the point: “Don’t I deserve to be with someone who finds me beautiful?” Her rage cools but the bruise remains, as, in a warehouse breakroom and various suburban locales (a world of streaky pink boxes, in Price’s hands-off set design), the four of them hash some shit out.