It makes total sense to present Neil LaBute's 10-year-old play in a chic Charing Cross Road gallery. His theme is the nature of art and the moral responsibility of the artist: big issues both, but I feel, as I did on a first viewing at the Almeida, that the nature of the narrative trick means it takes a long time to reach them.
On the surface, all seems clear enough. Evelyn, working on an art project at a midwestern college, meets nice, shy, scruffy Adam in a gallery where she's about to spray a graffiti penis on a sculpture. The couple start a passionate relationship, in the course of which Adam gets a complete makeover that includes everything from new clothes to a nose job.
But references to Shaw's Pygmalion and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein give heavy hints as to what is really happening. Only in the penultimate scene, however, do we get the full picture – by which time it's a bit late in the day to set up an earnest debate about the validity of conceptual art or the ruthless exploitativeness of the artist. Even if LaBute's play is pseudo-profound, Tom Attenborough's production sits well in the space and the playing is deftly pleasurable. Lucy Marks' Evelyn is a suitably smiling, seductive predator, while Andrew Nolan intelligently plays Adam not as a complete nerd but as a guy personable enough to make their affair seem plausible. Edward Rowett and Katy Marks as a young couple who suffer heavy collateral damage as a result of Evelyn's manipulativeness also give a neat display of fractured normality.
Shock and surprise may trump real discussion, but at least LaBute's caustic tale confirms Wilde's dictum that "all art is immoral".
