Actor grows up in Labute’s ‘Pretty’

Neil LaBute's "Reasons to Be Pretty" is a coming-of-age story. But if it's about the maturity of anything, it's actor Ryan Fonville's considerable talent.

The third-year Master of Fine Arts performance candidate has performed capably in many Nevada Conservatory Theatre shows, but has never seemed so three-dimensional.

It's as if everything he's been learning about acting suddenly has come together. And he achieves this feat with material laden with artificiality.

His character, Greg, is, as La Bute's men tend to be, insensitive to women. A remark he makes about his live-in girlfriend's plain face results in their breaking up. Hell has never seen the wrath of a woman so scorned.

Jamie Puckett as victim Steph screams her way through the first scene as if she mistakes her man for a punching bag. There's more unpleasantness ahead, with Greg's friend Kent (Griffin Stanton-Ameisen) bragging about how he's cheating on his pregnant wife, and Steph cruelly (and loudly) rebuffing Greg's attempts at reconciliation.

Director Kenn McLeod has done a lot of things right, but his tendency to allow his actors to exaggerate their villainy is not one of them. Kent is played like such a stereotype of male crassness that you can't figure out how he and Greg ever became friends.

Or for that matter, you can't imagine why Greg and Steph ever were drawn to one another. The lady, as portrayed here, is a physical abuser, an emotional psychotic and a real downer. She does not deserve to be walking around free.

What's amazing about Fonville is that for all his character's excesses, he manages to convince us that his actions are really springing from his head and heart. He never seems to be working at fitting into the LaBute mold. He just is.

You can see him struggling to say the right things, trying to figure out whether he should touch or back off, taking unpleasant action only when he feels he has no choice.

Donald C. Roose III's set is a curiosity. It starts with a generic bedroom that tells us nothing about its inhabitants, moves into a likably colorful workplace break room, and then remains empty, backed by only somber, black platforms. It helps darken a story that cries out for lightness.

McLeod obviously deserves much credit for setting the tone for Fonville's improvisatory-feel performance. I just wish the director had fought more against the script's dourness. He, like Fonville, might have been able to rise above all that sour sentimentality.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.