The Shape of Things to Come review: A play on deception

The Shape of Things
Park Theatre | ★★★★✩

Few plays can carry off the deception of appearing to be one thing but actually being something completely different.

But Neil LaBute’s razor comedy, which starred Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd when it premiered in 2001, is that thing. It bears all the signs of being a rom-com until the pride of one of its protagonists is shredded.

Adam (Bridgerton’s Luke Newton) and Evelyn (Peaky Blinders’ Amber Anderson) are twentysomething postgraduate students. She is an art major and he is an English literature nerd.

She exudes confidence, he emits diffidence. She is cool and attractive and Adam, well, he is neither. In fact, he could never imagine going out with a girl like Evelyn until, of course, he does.

Luke Newton (Adam), Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy (Phillip) - credit Mark Douet (2)

Luke Newton (Adam and Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy (Phillip) (Photo: Mark Douet)

The relationship makes Adam more confident. His gauche demeanour is shed for a cooler look, much like his threadbare blazer, which is swapped for a sleek bomber jacket.

The transformation is so marked his friends Phil (Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy) and Jenny (Carla Harrison-Hodge) are dumbfounded to see that good ol’ Adam has gone up a league or three, becoming even as hot and desirable as Jenny.

The dialogue is right up there with Nora Ephron and the relationship’s compromises and dilemmas are as acutely observed as they are in When Harry Met Sally.

But then, just when you might think you have the measure of a play that seems to be primarily about romance it morphs into an examination of what happens when one half of a couple has more power in a relationship than the other half.

Carla Harrison-Hodge (Jenny) - credit Mark Douet

Carla Harrison-Hodge (Jenny) - (Photo: Mark Douet)

How much of the real Luke is being lost to the one that has emerged? And is the change an improvement? And yet it turns out that even this shift is not the question that really interests LaBute.

Or at least it is not the one that interests him most. Remember, this is the author of In The Company of Men, an unflinching exploration of male behaviour so cruel it’s only a few notches down from a Bret Easton Ellis serial killer on the decency scale.

Indeed, it is the barbarity of what is considered normal behaviour that LaBute skewers so effectively.

Similarly, it turns out The Shape of Things could easily accommodate that line from Closer by our own chronicler of emotional violence Patrick Marber: “Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist wrapped in blood.”

But LaBute has yet another twist up his sleeve. Having morphed from being a rom-com to a play about an imbalance of power, it changes yet again to a performance about what constitutes art. It says as much about this subject in one scene as Yasmina Reza’s Art does in the whole play.

It would be criminal to spoil just how this play vaults its final theme. But I still remember the visceral shock of the revelation when I saw the original production more than 20 years ago.

I anticipated knowledge of the twist might reduce the play’s effectiveness. But for those who already know the play, Nicky Allpress’s well-acted production generates enough tension to compensate for the absence of surprise. Well, almost.