Neil La Bute provocative new play is in town. Adam Richmond has a roll in the mud with his latest, Fat Pig

Neil La Bute doesn’t do things by halves. Having slowly built a reputation as dangerous, vital and challenging playwright and filmmaker, he decided to stick his neck on the line by remaking The Wicker Man. It was an inexplicable choice for a writer who’d concerned himself with intimate and scabrous insights into human relationships. Why make a horror film? More importantly, why remake a British classic that most considered untouchable? Because like his work, La Bute is fearless and unapologetic. Alas, the resulting Nic Cage starrer was an unmitigated disaster, both critically and commercially. Despite such a public misfire, La Bute’s track record has seen him return with knives firmly put away.

His latest play, Fat Pig, is familiar, but bold territory… a scalpel like excoriation of male weakness and conniving. This time he takes on the fear of what people think and America’s obsession with body image. Skewering the everyday inarticulacy and half truths of personal relationships, the story itself is straightforward and direct (almost well worn). But La Bute’s keen eye for dialogue and throwaway one liners keeps the drama fresh. Character’s sentences peter out, they um and ah, “It’s, you know, whatever.” In La Bute’s hands, funnily enough, you always know what they mean, and the nuances that the characters give this phrase throughout the play is as revealing as it is pleasing. The familiar cast of TV faces do well, segueing smoothly from cutting humour to flayed emotion at the drop of a hat. Ella Smith, as the (ahem) big boned woman of the title, in particular shines. As the heart of the play she is warm, funny and sweet.

The character may be something of a cypher, but Smith turns Helen into a fully fleshed out character who wins your heart. Robert Webb plays Tom, the weak-willed, sweet ‘hero’ of the piece to great effect. While his American accent slips, he nails the main character, torn between happiness and what everyone thinks of him. His assured comic timing lightens and undercuts the looming darkness. La Bute likes to unsettle, and it’s apparent that he’s putting  the audience at ease for the more subdued and

ominous second act. Kris Marshall’s goofy turn robs Carter, Tom’s workmate, of any malevolence, but perhaps it’s intentional, La Bute grounds the story in the everyday and is perhaps tired of alpha males with a hidden agenda (men that populate his early films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbours). The lack of tricks or twists is refreshing and results in a story that always rings true. Most effective are the shades of truth La Bute paints, and the yawning chasm between just saying what you think (as the ebullient and foul-mouthed Carter frequently does) and being emotionally honest (as the milquetoast Rob rarely does). If you’re a man Fat Pig can be uncomfortable viewing, but anything that takes on male inadequacy with such wit is always welcome.

A course in controversy:

Bash – a series of monologues that includes one man’s recounting how he beat up a homosexual. The Mercy Seat – a man sits in an New York apartment as his mobile phone rings. Outside the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is filtering through. He is at his mistress’ apartment, and should have been in the second tower. As his wife continues to call to see if he is OK he faces a decision, should he use this disaster for his own gain, leave his wife and runaway with his mistress? In The Company of Men – La Bute’s first film made certainly made waves, as two recently dumped men decide to take revenge on all women kind by both dating the same woman and then dumping her at the same time, so “she’ll be reaching for the sleeping pills in a week.” That they choose a deaf woman as their target is neither here nor there… Your Friends and Neighbours – his most assured and biting film, this film follows the interconnecting relationships of three men and three women, and the battlefield of sex and deceit.