Neil LaBute

I had to read "The shape of things" by Neil Labute for my English class.
Before we started reading it, we had the topic "gender roles", so the play is a bit about it. It's also about art, about friendship and love and hate nad the things going this these things.

Story:
But mainly, it's focus is on the change of Adam, one of the four characters. When he meets Evelyn, he changes a lot, on the outside and on the inside. His friends, Jenny and Phillip, are suspicous of this whole new Adam, and they blame Evelyn for that. They four of them have a row about Adam ('s change) and so Adam has to chose: his friends or Evelyn.

Characters:
The play has interesting characters.
First, there is Adam. Shy, boring, the definition of a normal guy without friends. He works at a museum, where he learns to know a girl.
Second, there is Evelyn. She is self-confident, pretty and cool. She is an art student and she wants Adam to be her boyfriend. And to be more muscular, more pretty, to wear different clothes, a new hairstyle. And to be more self-confident, to give his friends up for her. She never insists on Adam doing all this things, she just suggests them. However, in the end it turns out she is not who she was supposed to be. Really interesting.
Then we have Jenny and Phillip, the engaged couple. Phillip, the best friend of Adam and Jenny, a girl Adam was in love in highschool, but always to shy to ask her out. They disagree on Adam's change first. Jenny think, it's great, cause she is a naive, blonde, sweet girl. On the other side, Phillip dislikes it, he likes the "normal, old" Adam and doesn't trust Evelyn. He is right. 

Writing:
The language is very easy to understand. I rushed through the book, because there isn't much text on each page. I think, it's difficult to only have four characters, but they're all so different that it's easy to follow the context. Each character has it's own "style" and that shows a bit in the writing.

Nevertheless, the book has this interesting characters, I wasn't really into it. It was more comical than serious in many parts and the ending was very odd.
I don't understand, why we read the book in class, because the gender roles (our topic) aren't that important in the book, I think.
Maybe we should see what can happen, if we change for someone.
Maybe..if...
So I give 3 of 5 sculptures for the book/playwrite. We're gping to watch the movie next week so let's see, how it is. :)