Neil Labute

PICK your date wisely; it's going to be a bumpy night. "Some Girl(s)," Neil LaBute's latest salvo in the gender wars, will have its West Coast premiere at the Geffen's Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater Wednesday, under the direction of the playwright himself. Rehearsals had already begun when actor Scott Wolf (last seen in LaBute's "Fat Pig") had to bow out for personal reasons.

When men are behaving badly, Jo Bonney is a good woman to have around. Take, for example, "John Smith. " A few days ago, in the Geffen Playhouse's rehearsal room, Smith was cursing a blue streak at his ex-wife in a new production of Neil LaBute's spiritually inquisitive drama "The Break of Noon. " Having survived a tragic office shooting, Smith believes that God has singled him out for a divine mission, like some latter-day suburban St. Paul. But like other born-again souls, Smith suffers occasional relapses to his old self, and as performed by actor Kevin Anderson the character's bouts of ornery misogyny are frighteningly credible.

Is it acceptable to break up with someone in a restaurant? Does it help to have dessert after you've been kicked in the teeth? Relationships -- professional and personal -- tank at the table in two Neil LaBute shorts, "The New Testament" and "Helter Skelter," now running as part of Open Fist's First Look Festival. In the world premiere of "The New Testament," a writer (Tim Banning) with a new drama about Jesus tries to have the lead (Peter James Smith) fired from playing the Messiah because he is of Chinese descent.

The playwright Neil LaBute is not known for beating around the bush or for having a feather-light touch regarding hot-button topics. Instead he revels in making his viewers squirm in their seats, question their egos and formulate panicked confessions. In his latest work, "Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: And Other Plays," he airs his earliest play, a series of vignettes told by characters hanging out in an American barroom, and other more recent works. Book Soup, 8818 W. Sunset Blvd.

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.

Even if you'd never seen pictures of Aaron Eckhart and Neil LaBute, it would be pretty easy to figure out which one acts and which directs. Eckhart is the lean, blond guy with chiseled features who leaps up from a hotel sofa to impersonate, in slo-mo, the neighborhood coyote that lopes through his Coldwater Canyon neighborhood at dusk. LaBute, burly and bespectacled, sits still and does most of the talking. In "Possession," which opens Friday, directed and adapted by LaBute from A.S.

If you've seen "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors," Neil LaBute's previous two movies, you'd be forgiven for thinking you know what it must be like to watch him work. First off, you might imagine, he'd assemble his cast in a nondescript room. The actors--youngish white guys, the white-collar variety--are discussing women, because that's what guys do in LaBute's movies. Bitterness and bile flow from their lips. They want to hurt women. Or bed them. They're not sure which.

Last winter, a distributor at the Sundance Film Festival was overheard saying to a reporter, "That's the cruelest film I've ever seen." The movie he was referring to was Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men." Obviously he had no intention of picking it up. In some ways, this response--well, any response--was exactly what LaBute was after.

NEIL LaBUTE's statement that colorblind casting fails to "put the best person in a role, regardless of color" implies that unqualified minority actors are somehow usurping the rightful place of qualified white actors ["The Cast System," May 6]. That opinion reeks of white privilege, as does his statement that we should all "get over" the American history of slavery. The tragedy of our current theatrical climate is not that white actors are being denied compelling ethnic roles, but that minority actors are repeatedly denied compelling mainstream roles.

For the second consecutive season, Neil LaBute, pegged in some circles as America's master dramatist of misanthropy, and in others as merely exceedingly dark, returns to the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, this time as director as well as playwright. "Some Girl(s)," which played in London and off-Broadway in 2005 and 2006, concerns a bridegroom-to-be who feels compelled to seek out all the girls he's previously loved (four, count 'em) before his date at the altar.

Director Neil LaBute's new comedy, "Death at a Funeral," which stars a posse of comics headed by Chris Rock, is the movie version of karaoke. It sings the same tune as the 2007 British underground hit, but it's a little, and at times a lot, off-key. Anyone who saw the original Frank Oz comedy of manners, with its Pandora's box of problems sharing coffin space with the deceased patriarch of a dysfunctional English family, should hold on to whatever fond memories they might have. For the rest, this new "Death" has its moments, but on the whole the production is, as "American Idol's" Randy Jackson might say, very pitchy and a couple of beats behind.

Tackling themes such as rape, an office shooting and kinky sex, the Geffen Playhouse's new season isn't for the faint of heart or the easily offended. The Geffen said Monday that its 2010-11 season will feature new plays by Jane Anderson and Neil LaBute, plus local premieres of work by Lynn Nottage and Tracy Letts. In addition, Hershey Felder will return with another of his signature stage biographies of a great composer. In all, there will be five plays on the Geffen's main stage, the same number of productions announced for the current season.

At a private screening and reception Wednesday at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University, filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer told the audience that "lightning struck for whatever reason" when his movie "Valentino: The Last Emperor" was released in March 2009. Tyrnauer said that he would have considered success a one-week run at a small New York theater. Yet in its first week, "Valentino" out-grossed the nation's then-No. 1 movies, "Knowing" and " Monsters vs. Aliens," on a per-screen basis and is still opening in countries around the world.

Is it acceptable to break up with someone in a restaurant? Does it help to have dessert after you've been kicked in the teeth? Relationships -- professional and personal -- tank at the table in two Neil LaBute shorts, "The New Testament" and "Helter Skelter," now running as part of Open Fist's First Look Festival. In the world premiere of "The New Testament," a writer (Tim Banning) with a new drama about Jesus tries to have the lead (Peter James Smith) fired from playing the Messiah because he is of Chinese descent.

Playwrights are known to cultivate their own informal repertory of most-favored actors, and Neil LaBute is certainly no exception. His stable of reliable thespians includes Aaron Eckhart, Paul Rudd, Stephen Pasquale and Ron Eldard. Next month, Eldard will take one of the lead roles in LaBute's "Helter Skelter," a one-act play about a married couple to run Aug. 21 to Sept. 12 at Hollywood's Open Fist Theatre. The play follows the deteriorating relationship between a husband and wife when a cellphone call interrupts their conversation.

MARIN IRELAND ADEPT AT THE RISIBLE OR THE RADICAL Ethereal yet grounded, actor Marin Ireland is magnetically attracted to theatrical projects that are at once ineffably abstract and vulnerably flesh and blood. Patrons of South Coast Repertory had the chance to experience her eccentric comic side last spring in Richard Greenberg's "The Injured Party." But she's revealed rawer nerve endings in darkly radical plays by Caryl Churchill ("Far Away") and Sarah Kane ("4:48 Psychosis" and in this fall's critically acclaimed New York premiere of "Blasted."

Neil LaBute has called New York's MCC Theater his creative home for close to seven years. But it now appears the relationship is headed for divorce court. MCC said Tuesday it has canceled its production of LaBute's latest play, "The Break of Noon," and a representative for LaBute said she was uncertain if he would remain MCC's playwright-in-residence. "The Break of Noon" was set to open the MCC's 2009-10 season after being bumped from its original spring 2009 slot. The drama tells the story of one man's religious epiphany after he survives an office shooting.