Marc Miller takes a look at If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka:
If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka. Is there a less appetizing title out there right now? What this one tells you is that Tori Sampson's drama at Playwrights Horizons will trade heavily in feelings about appearance, and do so in parlance that may not be attractive. Actually, there's more high-flown poetry than vulgarism in her writing, along with an odd fusion of storytelling techniques, ranging from dance to folk tale to Story Theatre-like stylization to Brechtian irony to girl-talk sitcom. Some clever devices, too, like having the narrator, or Chorus (Rotimi Agbabiaka), portray, if I'm getting this right, the heroine's cellphone. Do such disparate elements coalesce? Well, no, and Sampson's main point seems to be . . . if pretty hurts ugly must be a muhfucka. . . . |
