NEW YORK — Ashlie Atkinson is a "plus size" actress. She weighs about 210 pounds and wears size 14 clothes. But by the time playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute gets done with her, she'll have ballooned to more than 250 pounds and be wearing a size 26.
Atkinson is the titular star of LaBute's new play, "Fat Pig," opening Wednesday at New York's Lucille Lortel Theatre. The seven-scene drama marks the latest skirmish in LaBute's insurgency against politically correct storytelling. Like many of his previous provocative narratives -- including the movie "In the Company of Men" and the play and movie "The Shape of Things" -- LaBute's new play is anchored by humiliation, betrayal and truth telling.
Unlike much of his earlier work, "Fat Pig" is peculiarly humanistic. From LaBute's perspective, in fact, it may represent his most tender writing to date. "There's far less cruelty here," LaBute says in the middle of a recent "Fat Pig" off-Broadway rehearsal. "There's no real malice in what people are saying. Someone is not doing the hurting for sport."
Adds Bernard Telsey, the play's co-producer, who is collaborating with LaBute for the fourth time: "We all joke around that this is his accessible, sweet play."
That said, "Fat Pig" is scarcely LaBute's escape into romantic comedy. Where his other scripts have addressed misogyny, misanthropy and homophobia, "Fat Pig" confronts what might be an even more personal and polarizing issue: body image.
The play stars Jeremy Piven as Tom, who has recently broken up with a co-worker, Jeannie (Keri Russell), at an anonymous technology company. At a restaurant one night, Tom starts a conversation with a sexy librarian named Helen (Atkinson), promptly realizing she's everything Jeannie is not: warm, funny and smart. She's not vain, and she doesn't obsess over clothes, appearance and money.
They fall hard for each other -- and the mutual friskiness should be clear. "If you don't physically see that he wants to have sex with her, there is no point" to the play, says Russell, who is making her stage debut in "Fat Pig."
Compared to the sleek Jeannie, though, there's a lot more of Helen to love; her girth ultimately proves to be Tom's romantic crucible.
Embarrassed to be seen with his overweight companion in public, Tom begins concocting lies and strategies to shield her from his friends. But his prying colleague Carter (Andrew McCarthy) uncovers her identity and gleefully shares the news throughout the office.
