The Shape of Things

The Shape of Things is engaging from the start. At first it might be mistaken for nothing more than a rom-com, but it soon takes a turn for the deeper, and ends with a twist which none of us could ever have foreseen.

The team of four who star in it are very well cast, and command our suspension of disbelief to the point where, when the twist in the plot emerges, we are tempted to jump out of our seats and hurl comments of outrage and disbelief at the characters involved. The only reason, in fact, that we do not is because we are so intrigued in the turn the action has taken that we wish to see it unfold without our interference, for this is the kind of writing where the story seems in every way to have a life of its own which far transcends the portion of it we are allowed to experience.

Nudity and sex in plays can be there to distract us from the fact that there is nothing interesting in the writing; plays about life and about art can be pretentious; and both can be frustratingly boring... But the opposite of each is true for The Shape of Things.