The misanthrope speaks

Neil LaBute, our leading spokesperson for the beast within, talks about art, letter bombs and critics in the wake of Sept. 11.

By Kerry Lauerman

Nov. 26, 2001 | Is there another artist who seems less post-9/11 than Neil LaBute, the misanthropic writer-director of stage and screen? As Hollywood directors and studio moguls talk with the White House about reviving wholesome Capra-like tales and doughty "Mrs. Miniver" remakes, will the author of such aggressively mean stories as "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends & Neighbors" and, currently running off-Broadway, his play "The Shape of Things" find himself suddenly out of step with the times?

"Shape of Things," a critical smash when it opened in London at the beginning of the year, has taken it on the chin since opening in New York off-Broadway at the Promenade Theater in October, just weeks after the attacks at the World Trade Center.

It's a vicious little story of a young college student (played by Paul Rudd) who falls for an arty eccentric (Rachel Weisz), who clashes immediately with his seemingly more conventional friends (Frederick Weller and Gretchen Mol). Along the way, the group find new ways of being unspeakably cruel to one another.

In this respect, the play falls in nicely with LaBute's key filmed work. His debut, in 1997, was "In the Company of Men," a beastly look at a couple of beasts. And in "Your Friends and Neighbors," we found the title characters inflicting on each other all manner of inhumanity.

The enjoyment of those films and of "The Shape of Things" is similar to that of a good horror movie; scary not just because of their outrageousness, but their whiff of possibility. We're frightened by the behavior of the characters, and when the show's over, the adrenaline still speeding through our systems, we go giggling off into the autumn night, trying to reassure ourselves that no one we know resembles one of LaBute's monsters.

But it's not as if we need to be reminded of how cruel our fellow man can be right now, and it's hard not to believe the times didn't influence critical reaction to LaBute's "Shape" as a result. Ben Brantley, the New York Times' chief theater critic, called the play's good London reviews "a testament to the English belief in the cultural crudeness of Americans" -- an odd bit of jingoism to stick into a review.

And after New York Post off-Broadway critic Donald Lyons initially hailed the play Oct. 11, calling LaBute the "first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard -- since Edward Albee, actually -- to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power," the Post's Broadway critic, Clive Barnes, revised that view Oct. 24, criticizing the play as "insupportable and insupportably bad -- a nasty, brutish London import." That last slur is amusing -- Barnes is a Brit and he's writing about a play written by an American and starring a largely American cast (Weisz is English).

We asked LaBute what he thought his chances are now, and about the role of the artist in times of cultural trauma.

You finished shooting "Possession," the A.S. Byatt love story, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart, in the spring, but just wrapped up editing and everything recently. Do you finish it any differently because of 9/11?

I've gone through, actually, the whole "Oh gosh, I wish it were ready because what people really need now is a good love story." But I try not to let myself become guided by those voices, because I think it's dangerous to think like that. There's a certain vogue to that, of trying to play the field and gauge just where people are. But I think it's dangerous. You see how reactionary we are when we pull this Schwarzenegger film because it has terrorists in it, and then we stop the Kiefer Sutherland show, and now, when they realize there's a rush of patriotic feelings, there's a push stronger than ever for "24." And during the World Series, on TV, there's suddenly a "24" sign right behind home plate. And I'm sure the Schwarzenegger film will come out bigger than ever.

We're much more quick to try and find which way the wave is breaking and go with it.

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