The question which lies at the
heart of Neil LaBute’s darkly funny short play Fat Pig rises early from within its straightforward scenario: will
Tom defend his right to love whomever he chooses, or will he bow to societal
pressure and dump his unorthodox choice of partner? Fat Pig is a play about how social norms are policed, how
individuals and couples are made to feel like pariahs if they do not conform to
the unwritten though widely understood laws of living and loving in the 21st
century. In this case, Helen’s ‘sin’ is to be a bit fat, but LaBute might just
as well have made her a woman with a disability, a vegan or, yes, even a Muslim.
Elliot Howard plays Tom as a bit
of a sap, immensely likeable but ultimately weak. Even when the audience is
made to feel that he is contemptible for his lack of courage, Howard keeps us
not only interested but more or less partisan; we know his failure to stick up
for Helen is gutless and wrong but we sympathise, unsure that we would not do
the same in his shoes. Daniel McKinnon, as Tom’s boorish offsider Carter, lacks
the devil-may-care swagger his character requires but nevertheless succeeds in
turning in a strangely charming performance. Renee Gentle looks the part of
Jeannie, Tom’s pretty, sylphlike work colleague and ex-girlfriend but gives a
frustratingly one-dimensional reading of what is, to be fair, a challenging and
sketchily constructed part. I found Jeannie’s rage at Tom and her undisguised
contempt for Helen hard to understand or to believe, and whereas LaBute has
Helen make fun of ‘jolly fat people’ stereotypes, Jeannie seems to represent an
unreconstructed cliché: the skinny bitch, all good looks and cold eyes,
obsessed with physical perfection, angry at men for their juvenility and at
women because they are competition. The part seems to have been written chiefly
as a counterpoint to Helen’s charisma and amiability and as such succeeds in
serving the action and resonances of the drama but fails dramatically because
it lacks plausibility.
Helen, the fat pig herself, is
played with much light and gusto by Julia Mayer. The part of Helen is by far
the better written of the play’s two female characters and Mayer makes the most
of this. She is warm, amusing and vulnerable in just the right quantities and
has perfected a terrific, seemingly unstoppable laugh which endears Helen to
the audience almost immediately. The more we like her, the more it seems
certain that Tom will abandon her and this is LaBute’s cleverest ruse; to keep
us laughing even as we grow ever surer that Tom and Helen will not, as we
dearly want them to, ride off into the sunset like two characters from one of
the old films they watch together.
Fat Pig
is a deceptively well-written play, soap opera light on the surface but full
of moments which hit hard in their sharp-edged authenticity. I was surprised at
how little director Jesse Butler had to say about the play in his notes for the
program but his skilful directorship shows through in the production’s fluency,
roundedness and excellent use of space. I would only question his decision to
include an inexplicable ten minute interval, unnecessary in a play which runs
to only ninety minutes. That peculiarity – and the fact that Gentle and Howard
can’t quite create enough intensity between them when the play calls for it –
aside, Fat Pig is a fine piece of
compact theatre, well-directed and in the main well-performed. The play’s denouement
leaves nary a dry eye in the house and this is enough to convince me that Butler
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