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Review: America The Beautiful: Chapter 1 (King's Head Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

 

⭐️⭐️

 

With an extensive, decades-spanning career across both stage and screen, Neil LaBute has been counted among the United States’ finest playwrights and, at least according to one Village Voice writer, its “reigning misanthropist.” In its UK premiere, his America The Beautiful, a collection of nine short plays, that famously sardonic eye is cast over three chapters of three shorts apiece, beginning with Chapter 1’s debut at the King’s Head Theatre.


 

In America The Beautiful: Chapter 1 it is modern relationships to which LaBute turns his attentions. That notorious misanthrope alive and well, we are presented with three stories of heartbreak, infidelity, and the uniquely expansive evil that runs beneath humanity. First we see two men deep into their affair, plotting to kill one partner’s fiancé the moment they are wed, followed by a monologue within a military courtroom, and to close we meet a woman who has confronted her lover’s mistress, only to find herself the real object of desire.

 

The middle piece, Kandahar, is the most consistently compelling of the short plays on offer. With a singular voice and the growing intrigue, and crashing revelation, of what he is referring to with his opening, “She made me do it,” Kandahar is the clearest and most effective of this trio in getting across LaBute’s ideas about the failings and inherent darkness lurking within people. Here LaBute’s observations feel the most distant, given the most room to breathe, and the material is far stronger for how much gentler the reinforcement of the theme is.


 

Surrounding Kandahar are Hate Crime and The Possible, which bring gender dynamics and traditional expectation of relationships into the equation. For its narrative ferocity, a real-time conversation between two lovers as they plot a husband-to-be’s murder, Hate Crime seems to go nowhere. The plot is revealed and repeated ad nauseum, but despite some reservations of one man’s part, there’s never any real conflict or possibility of the whole thing being called off. The most interesting aspect at play in Hate Crime is the suggestion that the un-engaged partner will, “kiss you like a man kisses,” and the implications that the unseen fiancé is less stereotypically masculine, an intriguing commentary of gender norms and underlying biases within the gay community that is sadly underexplored.

 

Rounding out the evening, The Possible begins mid-conversation, with a young woman being confronted by the girlfriend of her recent lover. A wrench has been thrown in the works by her own announcement that this was part of a strategy to get one-on-one time with the girlfriend, the real object of her affection. LaBute’s dialogue is least natural here, the organic quality of his words strangely absent in a short that raises the age-old question of, “How do you know if you haven’t tried it?” and seems unsure on whether the characters even haver an opinion on the matter.


 

Anna Maria and Maya-Nika Bewley are a fairly enjoyable watch, even as The Possible becomes uncomfortable to sit with, with Maria’s overly intense delivery countering Bewley’s ground quality nicely. The eventual climax may be difficult to swallow, never mind understand how it was reached, but the ferocity imbues by Anna Maria ensures that there is some internal sense to the conclusion reached. Liam Jedele also does well with an underdeveloped role in Hate Crime, bringing a genuine vitriol to his criticisms of and plans against the unseen fiancé that amp up the tension and bring to attention the underlying themes around masculinity within the gay community.

 

Interestingly, Hate Crime’s less successful co-star returns to the stage moments later to deliver the most consistent and powerful work of the night, with Borris Anthony York appearing as both the engaged party in Hate Crime and the hardened soldier on trial in Kandahar. In Hate Crime he feels mannered in his portrayal, the heightened emotions further in feeling more genuine but the airy, effeminate voice and deliberate placement of body parts reading as false, but in Kandahar he spans emotions from sorrow to fury, glee to unyielding resentment, and makes every moment feel authentic and lived in. The character is revealed to have endured great pain, and to have done something unspeakable and unforgivable as a result, but York’s performance guarantees our early sympathies, our eventual horror, and our constant engagement.


 

With Jana Lakatos’ simple but malleable set allowing for settings to change swiftly without losing a consistent visual identity, director James Haddrell has guided his cast ably and ensured that the locales are never hard to surmise and the use of space leaves little doubt as to the scale or layout of these rooms. While his work on the latter two plays leans into their thematic discomforts more effectively, bringing an organic quality to moments that could feel too detached or cold on the page, there is a stilted, mannered quality to Hate Crime which seems to stem from the text itself, and unfortunately Haddrell hasn’t quite found the right touch to truly bring the piece to life.

 

Perhaps this is simply a case of fundamentally American work not resonating upon its arrival to the UK, or else LaBute’s cynicisms may better suit longer-form work. Though America The Beautiful: Chapter 1 may not the finest of LaBute’s countless works, for many the intrigue of seeing the work of such a renown author in this intimate space will be reward enough, and with the ever-growing list of concerns from within the United States, on our own shores, and even further across the globe, an hour and a half of detachment and discomfort may be exactly the point.

 

Chapter 1 of America The Beautiful plays at the King’s Head Theatre until March 14th, with Chapter 2 playing March 16th – March 21st

 

Chapter 3 plays at Greenwich Theatre March 31st – April 4th

 

Tickets and information can be found at the links below:

 

 

 

 

Photos by Ross Kernahan

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