Theatre Review: "Fat Pig"

Tonia and I recently got free tickets from my work to see a play, and here's the review I wrote. They published it one of our websites :-)

"Fat Pig" cuts close to the bone

Fat pig. Beached whale. Blimp. Lardass. The list goes on and on, and Neil LaBute doesn’t shy from using these euphemisms in his almost-too-painful-to-watch play "Fat Pig," recently presented by Breathing Time Productions at Studio Léonard Beaulne.
As women who have sometimes been targets of these kinds of terms, my friend and I made our way to the theatre with perhaps more opening-night jitters than the actors. Both of us felt as if we were about to expose ourselves to something that might hurt.

Contrary to its name, "Fat Pig" is a very lean presentation. The set is nothing more than a tiny stage with a few plain-Jane pieces of furniture and a video screen hanging at the back. With nothing else to look at, the audience is forced to focus on the four characters in all their cruel, selfish and often unsettling honesty.

Tom is a young, hip executive trying to find a place to eat his dressing-on-the-side salad in a crowded café. The only open seat he can find is next to Helen, a fat, but far from frumpy young woman thoroughly grooving on her slice of pizza. They meet, and as their conversation deepens the two discover an unexpected pleasure in one another's company.

Before long, they're dating. Tom is completely smitten with his new lover and revels in her bountiful body.

Even so, Tom tries to keep his relationship with Helen a secret from friends. Though only one of the characters is overweight all of the four of them struggle with notions of body-image and self-worth – Tom wants to be loved and accepted, but isn't sure whose opinion matters most to him; beautiful, thin, neurotic Jeannie bases her self-worth on the decisions of others. And the slick friend Carter is far more damaged than he at first appears.

As Tom's crisis of self-worth reaches its peak, Helen proves to be the only one with any guts at all.

Claudia Jurt (Helen) and Jared Côté (Tom) seemed a little awkward onstage at many points, although their delightful bedroom scene redeemed them. Perhaps their awkwardness was only in contrast to the strong performances of Corry Burke and Dani Kind as Carter and Jeannie. Côté and Jurt, however, played much more understated and therefore difficult roles. Even so, the story and the subject matter overshadowed whatever hiccups there may have been.

But the reaction from the two fat chicks?

It was mostly positive. We found the epithets flung about Helen to be sweet nothings compared to what we've been subjected to by strangers. It's a harsh world out there, folks. We've both been dumped because of our size or judged unfairly by those who barely know us.

We both related intensely to the Helen character for obvious reasons, but we related to Tom and Jeannie and Carter as well, as they were so human in their pain, even when their pain came out as anger and intolerance.

In the end, it was a scene that wasn't even in the play that moved me the most. After the play’s end Côté walked to the back of the set to gather himself. When he turned around to join his castmates for their bow his eyes were haunted, almost stricken.

He looked as if he'd been crying not as an actor, but as a human being. I knew he was overwhelmed by the tragedy of "being" Tom.

I turned to see if my friend had noticed, and found her wiping tears from her eyes too.

Fat Pig runs August 1-11 at the Studio Léonard Beaulne.