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Rating: 
Summary: Three Cutting Short Plays
Review: Bash is three short pieces, two monologues separated by a two hander. All three are surprising in their evolution, as each involves a gradual revelation from the characters in confidence with their "audience." The first piece, Iphigenia in Orem, is about a business man who confides in a stranger a terrible secret. This piece left me shocked and mining the logic of action and the susceptability one has to suggestion. The second piece, A Gaggle of Saints is a disturbing tale of a weekend trip to Manhatten by several Bostonians for a party, which culminates in a vile violent "night cap." The third, Medea Redux is a heart breaking story of young woman's spun world, as she speaks into a recorder inside a mental institution/asylum.
Each piece evokes the violence and sacrifice and desparation of Euripedes plays in a modern sense. The shock and unbelievability of these peoples actions are not lost on them, as they struggle with reason or in A Gaggles of Saints case, bask in it.
Rating: 
Summary: Important Play
Review: I have had the opportunity to direct this play twice in the past two years (once it was just one of the three plays), and I just can't say enough about how powerful it is. Critics of Labute say he is a mental rapist who is too dark. Read the newspapers and read this play and you will see that this isn't fiction. Like much great theatre it comments on our society and gives us pause. The characters and their situations are memorable, and Labute is a talented, tight writer.
Rating:
Summary: Important Play
Review: I have had the opportunity to direct this play twice in the past two years (once it was just one of the three plays), and I just can't say enough about how powerful it is. Critics of Labute say he is a mental rapist who is too dark. Read the newspapers and read this play and you will see that this isn't fiction. Like much great theatre it comments on our society and gives us pause. The characters and their situations are memorable, and Labute is a talented, tight writer.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent job by Neil Labute
Review: I just put down "Bash" after picking it up an hour ago... was it worth buying?... you better believe it! Gripping is not strong enough a word to describe this play of extreme violence and dark wit. Brilliant perhaps leaves a better taste in ones mouth. Mr. Labute writes with the lyric power of Vladimir Nabokov and dramatic strength of (dare I say it) William Shakespeare. Labute is the best new playwright on Broadway since Arthur Miller (in the 50s), and "Bash" is the perfect mode through which Labute is able to tell his stories. My favorite of the one-acts is "A Gaggle of Saints," a dynamic character study that leaves you both spiting and pitying the male lead... Grrr! I still can't get over it! I want more! I only wish I went to see "Bash" when it was on Broadway this summer... oh well, I have it year-round now!
Rating:
Summary: Still Shaken
Review: I saw this play last night and am eagerly awaiting it to be in stock again so I can buy it. Like some other reviewers here, I too am struggling for adjectives: brilliant is the best that I can do. It's written almost tenderly-- there is no contempt for these characters although what they do does not merit our love-- and it's written incredibly honestly. It's not at all sentimental, and you will step away from it shaken. Step into this world where celebration and violence are blurred as well as the title promises.
Rating:
Summary: "Latterday Greek Tragedies"
Review: Labute in these three vignettes is remarkably daring, but in ways that in critical discussion are generally ignored. His negativity or "depressing," non-cheery outlook is all that's usually singled out. What is missed is the continuity he establishes between seemingly "cool," emotionally minimalist, postmodern Americans and those anarchic passions of vengefulness, monstrous ambition, and macho rage which motivated the characters in Greek tragedies.
The necessary adjustments being made,the murderous Medea comes back to life in the first of these short pieces, and the equivalent of the daughter-sacrificing Agamennon does the same in the second. The third, perhaps the most shocking of all, features a mad Ajax-like murderer filled with macho rage who's hidden under the sweet-faced normality of the boy next door. Unlike the safe, conventional "American Beauty," whose gay basher was an over-the-top, stereotypical Marine, in "Bash" Labute really does "push the envelope" by making his violent homophobe an otherwise nice,comely, seemingly ideal young Mormon.
Each week, new plays appear which are described in the papers as truly provocative, daring pieces which challenge stale convention. Most of them, however, are only meant to challenge viewers in some mythical Midwest hick town while complacently reasserting the shared assumptions of with-it audiences in the big cities. Labute, on the other hand, actually calls such procedures into question, writing works which really are subversive of complacency. It's no wonder he's currently undervalued.
Rating:
Summary: "Latterday Greek Tragedies"
Review: Labute in these three vignettes is remarkably daring, but in ways that in critical discussion are generally ignored. His negativity or "depressing," non-cheery outlook is all that's usually singled out. What is missed is the continuity he establishes between seemingly "cool," emotionally minimalist, postmodern Americans and those anarchic passions of vengefulness, monstrous ambition, and macho rage which motivated the characters in Greek tragedies.
The necessary adjustments being made,the murderous Medea comes back to life in the first of these short pieces, and the equivalent of the daughter-sacrificing Agamennon does the same in the second. The third, perhaps the most shocking of all, features a mad Ajax-like murderer filled with macho rage who's hidden under the sweet-faced normality of the boy next door. Unlike the safe, conventional "American Beauty," whose gay basher was an over-the-top, stereotypical Marine, in "Bash" Labute really does "push the envelope" by making his violent homophobe an otherwise nice,comely, seemingly ideal young Mormon.
Each week, new plays appear which are described in the papers as truly provocative, daring pieces which challenge stale convention. Most of them, however, are only meant to challenge viewers in some mythical Midwest hick town while complacently reasserting the shared assumptions of with-it audiences in the big cities. Labute, on the other hand, actually calls such procedures into question, writing works which really are subversive of complacency. It's no wonder he's currently undervalued.
Rating:
Summary: Still Shaken
Review: While I hardly think homophobia and murder are confined to Latter-day Saints (I'm a member) this is still powerful, disturbing stuff. LaBute is kind of a Mormon Kubrick: with grim humor he forces you to look at things from which you would rather turn away.
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