Shifty ëShapeí Neil LaButeís Striking Play Is Trick or Treat for Audiences by Carolyn Cosmos The Shape of Things,î Neil LaButeís shocker at The Studio Theatre, is an urban legend, a caramel-covered Halloween apple with a razor inside. If you can stomach the inner horroróthe cruel tricks the characters play on one another and that the playwright pulls on youóyouíve got yourself a treat and an evening of intellectual and moral challenge. The playís verbal careening and allusions lead you into a labyrinth of ideas about identity and the nature of art, as well as the transforming and defacing powers of lust and love. There are references to ìAlice in Wonderland,î to writer Franz Kafkaís morphing man to cockroach, and repeat riffs, pro and con, on aesthete Oscar Wildeís devotion to art for artís sake, including the work where Wilde wrote, ìThere is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.î LaBute minesóand underminesóour notions of whatís real and whatís not, and the purportedly subjective and fluid nature of art. He gives us, for example, characters arguing about the defacing of a fig leaf covering a statueís penis. Theyíre engaged in a debate LaBut e clearly wants you to have about his own play. Is this debasement? Statement? Improvement? Pornography? Are we looking at graffiti or manifesto and propagandaóor are we witnessing an unveiling of lifeís deepest truth? The comic surface of ìThe Shape of Thingsî gives you two 20-something couples in a Midwestern college town. We not only watch their relationship permutations, but also plenty of sex under the sheets. Conventional and somewhat stolid Jenny (Margot White) and Phil (Justin C. Krauss) are engaged to be married. But the focus of the play is two graduate students: Philís literate friend Adam, played by Scott Barrow, and artist Evelyn, served up in one stunning turn after another by Holly Twyford. Adam enters as a nerdy gallery guard in a shapeless suit who falls for Evelynís double entendres and her black-booted and chain-wearing panache. Evelyn is in Adamís gallery rattling a can of spray paint. ìIf you get all crazy,î he says, nervous and bureaucratic, ìIíll have to write up a report.î Evelyn is determined to deface the offending cover-up, the fig leaf: ìI donít like art that isnít true,î she says. In her pursuit of truth, she eventually videotapes her and Adam carrying on in the bedroom. ìI think everyone should see themselves doing it and their friends shouldî see them too, she tells Adam. During the course of the play, the relationships weave together and then unravel, the couples descending into a tangle of real and suspected cheating, of real and imagined lies, and of marriage proposals proffered, accepted, rejected, questioned and taken back. But the most striking metamorphosis of the eveningósave one, and thatís the closing shockóis the transformation of Adam. Prompted by sculptress Evelyn, he cuts his hair, loses weight, ditches his glasses as well as his friends, switches from frump to fashion, and even has cosmetic surgery done on his nose. Thereís talk about accidental and deliberate flesh cuts, including suicidal wrist marks, and the aesthetic acceptability of scars. Jenny, impressed by the new Adam, says of Evelyn, ìThis girl is the Messiah. I love this woman,î to which Adam replies, deadpan, ìMe too.î Directed with snap and crackle by Will Pomerantz, LaButeís ìShapeî is funnyóas Adam asks of a friend, ìTelling jokes funny or making letter bombs funny?î LaBute is both, and the piece has the pace of stand-up comedy. It has the 20-something patter down pat and a hilarious send-up of the lingo of academic pretense that could stand on its own. Itís also got the no-waste pace of film writer and movie director LaBute (ìIn the Company of Men,î ìNurse Betty,î and ìPossession,î with a film version of ìThe Shape of Thingsî due out next year.) What LaBute lacks here, however, is compassion. His characters are etched in intellectual acid, done up and done in with a vivid, razor blade-sharp wit, and drawnóalso hanged and quarteredówith immense theatrical skill, but they veer toward scary skeletal characters in a morality play. You might feel youíve been tricked by some slight of mind and hand in the endóbut thereís not much chance youíll be bored by this particularly rocky horror play. ìThe Shape of Thingsî runs through Dec. 15 at The Studio Theatre, 1333 P St., NW (corner of 14th and P Streets). For more information, please call (202) 332-3300 or visit www.studiotheatre.org. Carolyn Cosmos is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.