I was writing only yesterday about my very personal connection to Fat Pig, and proof positive about how live some of the issues that the play raises are is the response of some of my colleagues. In a world where racism and homophobia are now rightly legislated against, one of the last bastions of legitimate prejudice seems to be fat-ism - even the state legislates against it as various local authorities are now actively withholding medical treatment to the overweight for procedures like hip and knee replacements.
But the worst part of the new fat-ism is the supposed concern that masquerades behind the assumption of guilt: “Huge is a growing issue nowadays; over a third of most people are too fat, and it’s bad for them and bad news for their loved ones,” writes Michael Coveney of Fat Pig in his review, while Charles Spencer suggests that Neil LaBute “is uncharacteristically soft on his fat heroine. To be as overweight as Helen is not normal, but LaBute doesn’t inquire why she has put on so many surplus pounds, jeopardising both her health and her romantic life.”
What legitimises such concerns is the assumption that “fatties” have brought it upon themselves - and can always do something about it.
Someone I know, who was in his early 20s at the time, was so desperate that he did do something about it: he had his stomach stapled - and complications ensued that meant he was ill for months. Like the heroine of LaBute’s play, he was large - and told me once that not a day went by without him being on the receiving end of public abuse in the streets.
Sometimes reviews tell you about the play, but also a lot about the personal assumptions of the writer. And sometimes, too, the personal facts, too: I’ve been candid about my own connection to this play here, and Charlie Spencer admits in his opening line to one as well - “As someone who tips the scales at the point where being overweight shades into the clinically obese, I approached this play with a certain foreboding. Was Neil LaBute, the perennial Mr Nasty of American theatre, whose plays are almost always full of ingenious cruelty and moral corruption, going to stick the knife into us fatties?”
In fact, Charlie goes on to doubt it, since he says, “‘I’ve interviewed LaBute and couldn’t help noticing that he was even chubbier than me. This is a man who is clearly no stranger to comfort eating. When the going gets tough I suspect that tough Mr LaBute gets going with the Snickers bars.”
And in an extremely personal programme note to Fat Pig, LaBute indeed chronicles his own struggle with his weight - and a diet he went on. “I dropped sixty pounds over the course of the next eight months and could see a marked difference in my attitude, body and overall demeanour. I was happy, healthy and in good spirits. Or so I thought.” But it came at a creative price - “This low-carb, heavy workout cycle was becoming as addictive to me as food had ever been, and I didn’t notice an end in sight. I also noticed I was writing less and less.”
But though the diet worked, it didn’t last: “The end, of course, came in the same way it does for so many people. Six months later I’ve gained back forty pounds, and I don’t see that trend stopping anytime soon.” It’s not just a question of eating - or not eating - but of identifying the underlying causes for it. Charlie may have suggested in his review that LaBute doesn’t ask why his heroine piles on the pounds, but LaBute knows why he himself does: “I’m a stress eater. When things get bad or even slightly tricky, I reach for a bag of chips or a bucket of popcorn and hunker down. My mother taught me this self-medicating trick years ago, and I’ve stood by it for a long time now. When it doubt, eat some Pringles.”
But LaBute isn’t, it turns out, so much concerned with the “problem” as with our responses to it: what he calls “our mutual fascination as a people in everybody else. Their weight, their looks, their celebrity. We’re a hugely narcissistic bunch - the internet and its many horrid little offshoots (blogs, facebook, youtube, etc) have proved that - but if there’s anything we find more interesting than ourselves it’s somebody else and their personal business. We stick our noses constantly into the lives of others with the flick of a button and root around until something juicy or amusing or horrible turns up. Because of that, I think my title for this play holds up. The analogy is apt. You do the math.”
Yes, I think LaBute gets points for not getting hung up on an issue which, as he admits, is directly relevant to him. But I fear he loses more than he gains for writing what is in effect the standard Neil LaBute play, which is in practice almost exclusively concerned with the self-centred anguish of a well-meaning but unkind person than with those to whom he (almost invariably "he") is unkind. I wonder, if "The Shape Of Things" had conformed to that perspective rather than bucking it by having as its viewpoint character the victim rather than the perpetrator, whether he would have broken through to the big leagues as quickly or as easily.