Most Popular Books by Neil Labute

Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black -- "rich, black, and different," in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, THIS IS HOW IT GOES unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America. "Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard -- since Edward Albee, actually -- to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." --Donald Lyons, New York Post "LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country''s sin-sick souls." --John Istel, American Theatre

Bash Three darkly brilliant one-act plays, unblinking portraits of the evils abroad in everyday life, first performed in 1999. ''You don''t need to be familiar with Greek tragedy to admire LaBute''s ability to illuminate the dark corners of the human mind . . . He writes with unblinking candour, unvarying incisiveness and the ear and eye for the tiny, telling fact that reveals a character floundering on the edge.'' The Times Reasons to Be Pretty Nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, Reasons to Be Pretty explores love, language and power with fresh wit and insight. ''Neil LaBute at his best. It says things about love and betrayal that are rarely put on stage . . . The play has the transfixing nastiness that has made LaBute one of the most disturbing theatrical presences of the last decade. Yet it also has an unexpected ingredient: a beating heart.'' Observer Now collected with its sequel, which follows the same four loveable characters - Reasons to Be Happy ''A richly entertaining shard of tragicomedy . . . a snap survey of American masculinity in crisis.'' Daily Telegraph If I Needed Someone A drunken first date becomes an acutely observed dance of desire, expectation and consent. ''For all of its misunderstandings, misperceptions, and bristles, for all the insecurities and past hurt it opens for both characters, If I Needed Someone is the kind of first date that people looking for love dream of having.'' Broadway World How to Fight Loneliness A married couple call on a third man to help them make a desperate decision, in this compelling and unsettling drama. How to Fight Loneliness received its UK premiere at the Park Theatre, London, in April 2025. ''A play that will force you to consider your own sense of mortality . . . starkly devastating.'' Spectrum

Filthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of his earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer''s panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry and hatred. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling. Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace.

''LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don''t like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.'' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends'' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a ''plus size'' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man''s offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things ''What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.'' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig ''As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.'' Variety In a Dark Dark House ''LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.'' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep ''It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister''s lurid sexuality.'' The Times

The title play, which had its American premiere at La MaMa in 2012, rivetingly explores the relationship between a nervous older man and a glib young prostitute, as their evening together drives toward a startling conclusion. Also included is the one-act play The Great War, which looks at a divorcing couple and the ground they need to cross to reach their own end of hostilities; In the Beginning, which was written as a response to the Occupy movement and produced around the world in 2012-13 as part of Theatre Uncut; The Wager, the stage version of the film Double or Nothing starring Adam Brody; the two-handers A Guy Walks Into a Bar, Over the River and Through the Woods, and Strange Fruit; and two powerful new monologues, Bad Girl and The Pony of Love.

''LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don''t like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.'' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends'' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a ''plus size'' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man''s offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things ''What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.'' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig ''As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.'' Variety In a Dark Dark House ''LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.'' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep ''It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister''s lurid sexuality.'' The Times

Your Friends & Neighbors is a searing display of the war between the sexes, delivered with the kind of wit used by the great Restoration playwrights to expose the hypocrisies in male/female relationships. Neil Labute''s debut feature, in the company of men, was described by Variety as "a dark, probing, truly disturbing exploration of yuppie angst and male anxieties". In Your Friends & Neighbors, male anxiety is again on show, but in a much wider context, revealing the rabid desire of people-regardless of sex- to serve their own interests at any cost.

Neil LaBute''s Bash is a collection of three darkly brilliant one-act plays. In ''Medea Redux'', a woman tells of her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her junior high-school English teacher. In ''Iphigenia in Orem'', a Utah businessman confides in a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room, confessing to an especially chilling crime. In ''A Gaggle of Saints'', a young Mormon couple separately recount the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. All three are unblinking portraits of the evils that are abroad in everyday life; each is distinguished by the raw and yet lyrical intensity that has become Neil Labute''s signature.

Two short companion pieces. In a chic restaurant in New York city, a man and his wife meet to take a break from Christmas shopping. He doesn''t know that she has already seen him today. Elsewhere in town, a couple part. He goes to the office, she visits a clinic. As events unfold, it becomes clear that this is not just any ordinary day.

Against a glittering jazz-age backdrop, mistress of the house Julie and ambitious servant John face off in a gripping, night-long encounter. As the balance of power shifts often and dangerously---sometimes with exquisite subtlety, sometimes stark brutality---LaBute masterfully reinterprets Strindberg''s timeless erotic struggle between a man and a woman. This thrilling, essential Miss Julie, which had its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in 2013 with Lily Rabe as Julie, Logan Marshall-Green as John, and Laura Heisler as Kristine, superbly embodies both the passionate spirit of the original and the unflinching style of Neil LaBute.

The winner of the Film-makers'' Trophy for Best Dramatic Feature at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, In the Company of Men is a black comedy about a psychological love triangle set within 1990s corporate culture.

What if God told you to be a better person but the world wouldn''t allow it? Such is the dilemma facing Joe Smith, a run-of-the-mill white-collar businessman who survives an office shooting and is subsequently touched by what he believes to be a divine vision. His journey toward personal enlightenment--past greed and lust and the other deadly sins--is, by turns, tense, hilarious, profane, and heartbreaking. Exploring the narrow path to spiritual fulfillment and how strewn it is with the funny, frantic failings of humankind, The Break of Noon showcases Neil LaBute at his discomfiting best.

"Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art"--About the play

Filthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of his earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer''s panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry and hatred. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling. Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace.