Fat Pig: A Play |  | Author: Neil LaBute
Publisher: Faber & Faber
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 37003
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 112
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 057121150X
Dewey Decimal Number: 812
EAN: 9780571211500
ASIN: 057121150X
Publication Date: November 29, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780571211500 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks. Neil LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldy questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves.
Neil LaBute is a critically acclaimed writer-director for both the stage and screen. His works include the stage dramas The Distance from Here and bash: latterday plays and the films In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty, and Possession, as well as the play and film adaptation of The Shape of Things.
How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus-sized—and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, Tom finally comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks.
Thus LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldly questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves.
"LaBute [is] the dark shining star of stage and film morality."—Linda Winer, Newsday
"LaBute [is] the dark shining star of stage and film morality."—Linda Winer, Newsday
"[LaBute's] view of modern men and women is unsparing . . . [He] is holding up a pitiless mirror to ourselves. We may not like what we see, but we can't deny that—if only in some dark corner of our souls—it is there."—Jacques Le Sourd, The Journal News (White Plains, New York)
"LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country's sin-sick souls."—John Istel, American Theatre
"There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute."—John Lahr, The New Yorker
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 not so much March 22, 2009
Marilou Baughman (Portland, Oregon, USA)
I didn't like this play as much as I thought I would. I liked the concept, but it seemed like LaBute struggled to make a whole play out of it. I felt bogged down in repetition and wasted time as the characters uttered one unfinished sentence, one unfinished thought, after another. I spent much of my life as one of "the fat girls," and I kind of wish LaBute had done better by us. That said, however, the play does take on an important but touchy subject with considerable honesty.
 Awesome Play-- August 27, 2008
C. Fowler
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This play is another one of Neil LaBute's dark comedies that asks us to question our views on physical beauty. GREAT PLAY.
 This little piggy went to market. April 5, 2007
Ruth Bell (Burringbar, NSW. Australia)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Some may dissagree, but I found this play very brave. It talks about the stuff that people think but don't discuss openly. I really fell in love with the lead female character and the neurotic x-girlfriend. I laughed outloud. I especially love the line. " Well, if I'm crazy you made me that way!"
It's funny and yet heartbreaking. I found the male characters really screwed up. But then, perhaps that's because I'm a female. After reading this play I went and saw it performed and loved it. This is a great play to perform, I'd imagine as LaBute provides you with so much.
"A Boy-Man For All Seasons" November 5, 2006
Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Evelyn Waugh said years ago he revered the Church because its high standards "kept him human." Neil LaBute shows us a world several rungs below Waugh's. His characters lack not just a Church, but even a secular Code of Manners. Therefore, they lack awareness of any obligatory rules of mutual respect which might be capable of teaching them, the males in particular, possible ways to a fully human adulthood. LaBute's subject, once again, is the American boy-man, a benighted, largely unformed character, of whom in this play he gives us two examples. The first, Carter, thinks he's being witty when in fact he's merely buffoonish and impertinent. The second, Tom, openly admits to an easy complicity with injustice owing to a personal lack of fortitude and general weakness of character. The Knights of the Round Table or St.Thomas More, both alluded to in the play, of course have long lost any appeal to such guys as models. Carter and Tom are pretty much on their own; without profound guidelines their presumed freedom has them bowing to the whims of the moment or to pressure from the current in-crowd. Unfit for loyalty, much less marriage, they are, in following uncritically their untutored impulses, by and large just another species of serial fornicator skilled at playing and then betrayal in what they term, in contemporary parlance, "relationships." They are each, in other words, our generation's average sensual man. Tom, in his ignorance and weakness, is the far less satanic of the two. In fact, he is not so much a grand theatrical sinner in the mode of Iago or Tartuffe, as he is, embarrassingly, just a mediocrity. LaBute, nevertheless, has a bit of a soft spot in his heart for this character, recognizing in him, when he weeps, perhaps a flash of that triple betrayer Simon Peter at his lowest point.
The principal woman of the play, the clever, obese heroine Helen is clearly living in the wrong century. She'd have been much happier in the time of the fat woman as ideal, the time of Rubens or Rembrandt, where, far from being ridiculed, she might have posed as a model. Though the most insightful character in the play, she asks repeatedly for honesty from her suitor, the good-looking, non-heroic Tom, and she finally gets it - unfortunately. While he cares for her as much as he might for anyone besides himself, in his own words he is at best "a weak and fearful person," so despite his tears, he tells her what she least hopes to hear. Surely Jane Austen must have had some early 19th century boy-man in mind when she quipped that in social life "honesty can be an easily overrated virtue."
Too True! October 18, 2005
Caro Bontekoe
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This play can really hit home if you have ever dated outside of your league. The pressure to date some one your friends approve of weighs heavy on the character Tom. Societal pressure to be perfect and be with the perfect person is explored and so worth your time and money to go on the journey. I completely recommend this play!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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