Review: The Shape of Things

Adam is a nerd. A student making his way through the university, he works two jobs, one of which is as a guard in a campus art museum.

Evelyn is an amoral, free-spirited student working on a “performance art piece” and obsessed with “truth” in all life experiences.

The two meet when Adam notices she has approached a cordoned-off statue with a can of spray paint and asks her to leave.

He is attracted to her joie de vivre but he is diffident and has difficulty talking to her. She encourages him and eventually he invites her to coffee.

This is the simple opening of Neil LaBute’s play The Shape of Things, now at the Lab A Theater in Wright Hall at UC Davis.

The relationship between Adam and Evelyn grows and eventually includes Adam’s old roommate Philip and his fiancée Jenny. Sparks fly between Philip and Evelyn as they trade barbs and insults and clearly can’t stand each other, while mild-mannered Jenny and Adam look on helplessly.

In this intense work, directed by Gregory Holmes, these four examine the meaning of friendship, sex, betrayal and what constitutes “art.”

Melissa Cunha and Taylor Church give strong performances as Evelyn and Adam. Emile Rappaport is suitably obnoxious as Philip while Kelly Tappan is a bit too demure as Jenny—it was sometimes difficult to hear her.