Neil LaBute's Reasons to be Pretty Will Get Broadway Transfer

Prolific playwright Neil LaBute will get his Broadway debut next winter when Reasons to be Pretty transfers to the Great White Way. Performances will begin on February 13, 2009, at a theater to be announced, produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler, the team behind August: Osage County.

Reasons to be Pretty is running off-Broadway through July 5 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, produced by MCC Theater and directed by Terry Kinney. The entire four-person cast—Piper Perabo, Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski and Pablo Schreiber—is confirmed for the Broadway transfer.

In a statement, Richards said, "Jerry, Steve and I feel Neil LaBute is an exciting and distinctive American voice—it's time for him to be presented on Broadway. We feel as strongly about Reasons and MCC Theater as we did last season about Steppenwolf and Tracy Letts' August.

Reasons to be Pretty confronts America's obsession with physical beauty headlong. The tight-knit circle around a factory worker named Greg Sadoski is thrown into turmoil when his off-hand remarks about a female co-worker's pretty face and his girlfriend's lack thereof get back to said girlfriend Pill. Greg's best buddy Kent Schreiber and Kent's wife, Carly Perabo, also enter into the picture and the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated.

LaBute is a resident playwright at MCC, which has produced six of his plays. Reasons to be Pretty completes a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig.

Scenic design for the play is by David Gallo, costume design is by Sarah J. Holden, lighting design is by David Weiner, music and sound design are by Rob Milburn & Michael Bodeen and fight direction is by Manny Siverio.