Fat Pig

They say that love is blind, but how do you make it deaf and dumb as well? And if you fall in love with a fat girl, can you withstand the onslaught of jibes and jokes from your friends and colleagues? That’s the dilemma playwright LaBute explores in Fat Pig. La Bute has been labelled a misogynist and a misanthropist many times over.  Certainly he’s a cynic, but actually the play is surprisingly gentle. The main problem with his writing is that he has no understanding of women at all, and so his male characters dazzle while the females are bland stereotypes by comparison. That’s a worry when the object of desire…the Fat Pig of the title…is a woman, but LaBute solves it by telling the story from the male point of view, reducing the character of Helen to little more than a device to explore the male perspective.

Labkelpie is a new theatre company, and what a debut this is for them. With the stunningly versatile and talented Lyall Brooks as Tom, and the mesmerising Patrick Harvey as Carter, his office mate, the laughs come thick and fast even while we’re squirming.

Lyall Brooks has such a convincing presence in any role he plays, that it’s hard to look past him in any production. His Tom is warm, insecure, and ultimately shallow even though we want him (as he himself does) to be strong and heroic. He is never less that 100% convincing and impressive; real, fine, acting indeed. You can imagine then just how good Patrick Harvey (Carter) is when he manages to steal every scene in which the two appear together. Harvey is astonishing….every expression, every gesture, even his thought processes are both meticulous and yet completely natural. There’s no sign of technique, he IS Carter. The two together are like a fresh bowl of Rice Crispies….more snap, crackle and pop than most mere mortals can handle. Director Daniel Frederiksen makes a veritable banquet out of their time on stage together, and brings out two of the best performances in a comedy you will see this, or any other, year. Cassandra Magrath is brittle perfection as Jeannie, the neurotic and bitchy accountant whom Tom once dated.

But much of the weight (!) of the play falls on the delicious Lulu McClatchy as Helen. She’s such a pretty girl (as so many of we “fatties are…yes, I am one, or BBW as we are now called) and all curves, so physically she is Helen. I have seen fine performances from her in the past. And yet there is something lacking in the character, the writing, the performance. LaBute describes her as sassy, confident, sexy, funny. And if she were that, one could understand Tom falling in love with her…she has all the qualities he lacks. Yet there’s something tentative, almost apologetic, in McClatchy’s performance. It’s small, rather than larger than life. It is when we fat women truly revel in all our lustful excesses and passion for life that men are drawn to us….and that’s what Helen needs to be. The raucous laugh, without any inhibitions, should metaphorically portray all that she is….a real person, unafraid to be herself,  in a world of phoney stick insects. Then we would understand why Tom falls in love with her. Indeed, that symbolic laugh is what draws him to her in the first place. Part of the problem is in the writing….when Helen says she will change, even have stomach stapling if she can keep Tom, my heart sank and I started to cry – for all the wrong reasons. The writer had betrayed the character. Yet, if that’s the text, it has to be played. Frederiksen, as director, has neglected to find the way for McClatchy to play it with reluctance and sacrifice rather than desperation…. A sense that loving someone else is even more important than loving yourself. I couldn’t help but think of the in-your-face confidence Rebel Wilson would bring to the role. We have an ethos as beautiful fat women. It is this “I don’t have a weight problem. I’m comfortable. If you’re not, then it’s YOUR problem. Deal with it” (assuming of course that we are comfortable…and Helen is certainly intended to be). Then we pray to find a man brave enough to do that. Tom isn’t that brave, and that’s the tragedy. But it’s a tragedy for him, not for her. She knows (or should) exactly who and what she is and she isn’t trying to pretend. When she confronts him about keeping her away from his friends and colleagues, it should be a challenge, forcing him to accept the answer she already accepts. Instead, it’s played with confusion and a question mark. It isn’t helped by there being NO sexual chemistry at all between the actors when really Tom and Helen should be steaming up the stage in their scenes together.

All that aside (and my opinion comes from a very specific  and ‘weighty” perspective), this is a terrific production and well worth seeing. It really is an auspicious beginning for a fine independent theatre company, and I can’t wait to see Brooks and Harvey in their next outing.

Coral Drouyn

Photographer: Sarah Walker.