It would be nice to like Neil LaBute.  He writes like repurposing is the ultimate virtue, he needs entire speeches to make simple points (not that he always finds one by the end), and his world is a binary permanently on zero.
            Fat Pig isn’t his only work that makes it quite obvious he’s sick of people who won’t show anything bad, so he compensates by refusing to show anything good.  He sometimes ends up with the right point because of it, but usually for the wrong reason, and four rights really isn’t quite the same thing as going straight.
            It’s fairly impossible to deny that he’s tapping into some kind of zeitgeist, though.  You could call him unconsciously post-modern, but he’s so obviously proud of it, he knows what he’s doing; nevertheless, he’s celebrating his own instincts.  He is the almost necessary result of a culture that has cable television and watches it three hours a day, one that’s complex really only in its vastness.  Everything is still either black of white, and LaBute, mirroring any number of cultural trends, thinks it’s better to stare at the black because most people are focused on the white, never thinking for a moment that he should just smack the top until it show some colour.
            I’ve heard people argue that LaBute is really showing the whole picture, but I just don’t buy it.  He’s showing people’s bad sides—which is admirable, since there are enough people in the world intent on avoiding that—but his characters are too relentlessly pathetic, or callous, or whatever pejorative, that they’re really just the goateed version of what he’s trying to avoid.
            TAKE TOM (SKYE BRANDON), the main character in the story, the one who dates the fat girl (Carlye Windsor, whose name is Helen in the play, not that it especially matters, because for LaBute she’s mostly an idea).  Essentially a living self-deprecation, Tom’s only redeeming quality is that he eventually realizes not only how pathetic he is, but that he won’t be able to change, which would be more earth-shattering if it wasn’t so painfully obvious to everyone but himself (on of his so-called friends—if there is any other kind in LaBute—tells him so quite plainly).
            The obvious response to this is that the critic is probably just lying to himself, but even if I am, it proves my point. I’ll happily grant that people have trouble admitting their faults, but Tom is entirely unaware of them, so much so the realization sucker-punches him so hard you wonder how he got around without any sense of self before then.
            I’m being unfair to the production here, but it’s a testament to how purely Trevor Schmidt syncs his aesthetic with LaBute’s that I’m having trouble keeping them apart.  If you like LaBute (perhaps even if you’re just indifferent), you’ll undoubtedly love this production, much the same way as you needn’t have been more than just apathetic towards Noel Coward to love last year’s season-ender Private Lives (or the Citadel’s semi-recent production of The Shape of Things)
            Windsor plays her part as well as she could, considering it’s more fat suit than fat person, and the rest of the cast is essentially spot on; Jesse Gervais (Tom’s friend Carter), who will play Patrick Bateman if someone ever produces American Psycho on an Edmonton stage, has almost been auditioning for this role for the past two years, and Lora Brovold (Tom’s ex Jeannie) is every bit a unhinged as a woman in those heels in this play should be.  It really is wonderfully made; it’s just not something I want to buy anyway.

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