These two readings of plays by Neil LaBute exploring America’s obsession with physical beauty highlights the current LaBute play Off-Broadway. MCC’s current production of LaBute’s bristling new comic drama reasons to be pretty puts a final, ferocious cap on a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig (which MCC also premiered). The series brings together many of the original artists from the first two plays in the trilogy in support of the critically-acclaimed reasons to be pretty, which marks the sixth collaboration between MCC Theater and LaBute, MCC’s Playwright-in-Residence.

Mr. Marshall-Green and Ms. Perabo complete a cast that includes Anna Camp (The Country Girl, The Scene) and Austin Lysy (Hitch, A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Acclaimed director Carolyn Cantor, who last worked with Neil LaBute on MCC Theater’s 2007 production of In a Dark Dark House, will direct. Logan Marshall-Green replaces Paul Rudd who, due to a last-minute schedule change, will not be available to perform in the reading.

This special one-night-only reading of The Shape of Things is performed tonight, Monday, June 23 at 7:00 p.m. at the Lortel, where reasons to be pretty is currently playing to sold-out audiences. As previously announced, reasons to be pretty will transfer to Broadway later this season.

A limited number of tickets for The Shape of Things are still available and can be purchased at the Lucille Lortel box office, by visiting www.mcctheater.org or through www.ticketcentral.com or by calling (212) 279-4200.

Meanwhile, NBC is still keeping its midseason options open as promotional materials for four of its pilots that didn’t make its 2008-09 schedule have been released:

BLUE BLOOD - “THERE’S A NEW ROOKIE IN TOWN. From the Hamptons to the South Bronx, Blue Blood follows the true story of Harvard educated cop Ed Conlon in his first year as an NYPD officer. He joins a group of rookies, fresh out of the academy, assigned to beat patrol. Despite what the academy taught them, they will learn that being a rookie is as much about upholding the law as it is about survival on the streets. Blue Blood is an action drama that takes us into the hearts and minds of those sworn to protect and serve.” Cast: Logan Marshall-Green as Ed, Kate Levering as Colt, Vincent Piazza as Bobby, April Lee Hernandez as Sophia, Larenz Tate as Andre, Alex Fernandez as Sgt. Vargas. Studios: 20th Century Fox Television, Little Engine.

Source: NY daily News

In the short “All Saints Day,” a quietly sad young woman (Mamie Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep) is heading home in a bedraggled costume the morning after Halloween - and an unsatisfying one-night stand.

Looking for directions, she strikes up a conversation with a charming young man (Benjamin Walker) sipping a cup of coffee on his Manhattan stoop.

Writer Brooke Berman came up with the idea for the plot the old-fashioned way: She and director Will Frears (son of Stephen Frears) stole it from life.

“Will heard this great story from our friend, [actor] Logan Marshall-Green,” says Berman, who is developing an expanded version of the short.

“Logan’s birthday is Nov. 1, and every year on his birthday his favorite thing to do is get up early, make a cup of coffee and go sit on the steps and watch the walk of shame in costume.”

With that seed of an idea, Berman, who was living in L.A. at the time, wrote the first draft in a day - after a little digging for details.

Until it self-destructs — crushed by the weight of its own self-regard — “U.S. Drag” seems well worthy of the Blackburn Prize conferred on scribe Gina Gionfriddo for her satirical look at a generation raised to expect the material world to fall into its lap, but hungry for more substantial values. Young, fit and hot to go, the self-assured thesps in helmer Trip Cullman’s production for StageFarm have the stuff to make a smart showing of the young career climbers whose lives are transformed by a serial killer named Ed. But when the satire turns into self-worship, even Ed wears out his welcome.

Gionfriddo is at her wittiest in the opening scenes that introduce us to best friends Allison (Tanya Fischer) and Angela (Lisa Joyce), ambitious young things positively affronted at having to start their careers in low-paying jobs. “I don’t want to be entry level,” Allison protests, pointing out that the work is demeaning to someone of her intelligence and education — and the pay is pathetic. “It’s hard to work for a little when what you want is a lot. I want a lot.”

Although she only holds a Magna to Allison’s Summa, Angela is even huffier about their sense of entitlement — and their humiliating need for money. Both thesps are adorably hateful as these pouty princesses storm the stage in their chic little club dresses, fuming about the unfairness of a pay-for-play society that refuses to acknowledge their existential superiority.

Helmer Cullman is just as clever at establishing a visceral sense of the hermetic world where the girls and their friends circulate. There are some flaws in the design: Aside from the aesthetic lift, little use is made of the catwalk level of Sandra Goldmark’s two-tiered set of heavy metal scaffolding and chain link fencing — so tough it could pass for a prison until the neon club lights flash on and the indoor furnishings fly in. And while the jangling rhythms of Bart Fasbender’s sound design reflect the frenetic situations in which Allison and Angela become involved, the surroundsound approach overwhelms any more subtle emotional interactions onstage.

But these are correctable problems, and the show looks good; so do the thesps playing the various losers and weepers who figure in the girls’ unstable lives.

Again, Gionfriddo is best at introductions, and first impressions are strong. James Martinez makes mincemeat of a trust fund kid who enlists Allison and Angela in his bleeding-heart campaigns to rescue death-row inmates, downtrodden prostitutes and other dubious victims of society. “I know the pain one feels in impotence,” he says, telling the girls, who are hitting him up for money, all they need to know about him.

Matthew Stadelmann finds inspiration in the animal kingdom, bringing the unloveliest aspects of a wasp and a snake to his keen study of Ned, a petulant Wall Streeter who lets the girls crash in his apartment, so long as they bring friends home to party.

Logan Marshall-Green cunningly hides his natural charisma to take on Christopher, a lionized author whose work of “creative nonfiction” is no more than the childish whine of someone who feels insufficiently adored by his parents. A simple question about the “truth” of his book triggers a lecture on postmodernism that brings out the best of Gionfriddo’s cutting satiric style.

While such displays of withering wit are fine for skewering the pretensions of all the characters in this aimless play, they don’t add up to a plot. There are stirrings of one when Allison and Angela find themselves at a meeting of S.A.F.E., which stands for “Stay Away From Ed.” Ed is a serial killer who lures his victims by asking them for help, so this victims’ advocacy group has come up with an odd way to foil him: “Don’t help. We can just not help each other.”

As group leader Evan (Lucas Papaelias) tells the troops, “A good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan.” But the girls are so desperate for money that they go out hunting for Ed, hoping to collect the reward.

It takes a while to catch on, but at some point in Cullman’s fast-and-furious staging of the play’s sketchy scenes, it becomes evident that Gionfriddo has lost interest in her plot premise. As have Allison and Angela, who pinball from whim to whim pursuing money, boyfriends and, in Allison’s unbelievable case, a purpose in life (”I just want to matter,” she declares).

Things happen, to be sure, in this busy piece, and characters continue to say smart things when cornered. Angela, for one, delivers a wonderful speech about the value of superficial social interactions. And Christopher has some shrewd things to say about self-destructiveness. But it appears as if the playwright, like her narcissistic characters, feels that when it comes to the mundane chores of basic dramaturgy, she’s entitled to a free pass.

The New York Stage and Film Company will present a one-night-only reading of Stephen Belber’s Geometry of Fire March 10.

Directed by Lucie Tiberghien, the reading will be presented at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Black Box Theatre. The cast will feature Reed Birney, Donnie Keshawarz, Logan Marshall-Green and Jennifer Mudge.

“One man is a Marine reservist sniper just back from Iraq,” according to Geometry press notes. “The other is a Saudi American looking for the cause of his father’s death. When their paths cross, they collide and both men grapple with their past and their future. This timely play is an intimate, humorous exploration of the complications of war and the effects on those involved.”

Geometry of Fire made its world premiere as part of The New York Stage and Film Company’s 2007 Powerhouse Season. The upcoming reading will feature Belber’s revision of Geometry based on that production, which co-starred Mia Barron, Reed Birney, Piter Marek and Logan Marshall-Green.

The evening will begin at 6:30 PM with a reception followed by the 7 PM reading.

Roundabout Theatre Company’s Black Box Theatre is located at the Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th Street in New York. For reservations e-mail efox@newyorkstageandfilm.org.

by Gina Gionfriddo
directed by Trip Cullman

February 23 - March 16, 2008
Tuesday - Saturday 8pm, Sunday 3pm/8pm
The Beckett (at Theatre Row)

OPENING NIGHT Saturday March 1, 2008
Special Fundraising Event with Post-Performance Cast Reception
Tickets $200 (Limited Quantity)

CLICK TO BUY TICKETS
$20 ticket offer w/ code DRAG20

Logan Marshall-Green, Matthew Stadelmann, and Audrey Lynn Weston will be among the cast members of Gina Gionfriddo’s U.S. Drag, which will begin performances at the Beckett Theatre on February 23. The show, which will be directed by Trip Cullman, will open officially on March 1.The dark comedy is about two recent college grads on the hunt for love, money, meaning, and Ed — New York’s most elusive serial attacker. Gionfriddo’s plays include After Ashley, Becky Shaw, Guinevere, and Blue Movie.

The cast for will also include Tanya Fischer, Rebecca Henderson, Lisa Joyce, James Martinez, and Michael Mosley. The creative team will include Sandra Goldmark (sets), Nicole Pearce (lighting), Emily Rebholz (costumes), and Bart Fassbinder (sound).

Marshall-Green’s stage credits include King Lear, Pig Farm, Dog Sees God, and Swimming in the Shallows. Stadelmann’s credits include Rag and Bone, American Sligo, and Stone Cold Dead Serious. Weston is currently appearing in Widows, and her other credits include Rag and Bone and REARVIEW MIRROR.

Cullman’s prior directing credits include Some Men, Swimming in the Shallows, and The Last Sunday in June. He will also be directing The Drunken City at Playwrights Horizons later this season.

For more information, visit www.thestagefarm.org.