The art of being cruel

Sofa so good: a scene from The Shape Of Things

By the BBC's Neil Smith

From Damien Hirst's pickled cows to Tracy Emin's soiled bed sheets, anything can be called art these days.

It's an idea American writer Neil LaBute takes to shocking extremes in The Shape of Things, currently receiving its world premiere in a converted coach depot in North London.

LaBute remains best known for his film In the Company of Men, in which two yuppies boost their flagging self-esteem by humping, then dumping an unsuspecting colleague.

But he is also a highly accomplished playwright, as anyone who caught last year's production of Bash will attest.

Compelling

Rachel Weisz of Mummy Returns fame plays Evelyn, an art student we first see vandalising a sculpture of a male nude.

The sculpture, she tells bemused museum attendant Adam (Paul Rudd), is "false art" - the first clue to where LaBute's compelling four-hander is headed.

The Shape of Things is about the unspeakable things we do to each other and the emotional devastation they leave behind

Neil Smith

Under Evelyn's subtle instigation Adam goes from bespectacled nerd to buffed-up studmuffin, acquiring contact lenses, cool clothes and even a new nose in the process.

His transformation unsettles his former room-mate Philip (Frederick Weller), whose fiancee Jenny (Gretchen Mol) Adam once had a crush on.

It's only in the final scenes, though, that Evelyn reveals her true agenda, forcing the audience to re-evaluate all that has gone before.

Sick

On press night, the gentleman from the Daily Express said he hoped the play we were about to watch would be "gratifyingly sick".

Without giving too much away, I doubt he left disappointed.

Mummy star Rachel Weisz returns to the stage

LaBute is dealing with important themes - the relationship between the artist and his subject, the limits of friendship and society's obsession with superficial glamour.

He also shows off his erudition by referencing everything from Oscar Wilde and Frankenstein to the Smashing Pumpkins, whose ear-bashing grunge accompanies the somewhat fussy scene changes.

(It was Billy Corgan's cacophonous compositions that made Harold Pinter beat a hasty exit on the opening night, according to the Almeida's artistic director Ian McDiarmid.)

Unspeakable

At its heart, however, The Shape of Things is about cruelty - the unspeakable things we do to each other, and the emotional devastation they leave behind.

And thanks to the brilliant, finely tuned performances from the youthful cast, every raw nerve and ache of betrayal is there for us to see.

It's easy - too easy, really - to accuse LaBute of being a misogynist, a misanthrope and a plain old misery-guts.

But what can't be denied is that his visceral vision of the world is a lot closer to the world we live in than most of us would care to admit.

The Shape Of Things is on at the Almeida at King's Cross, London, until 23 June