Reasons to be Pretty Causes Audience Outburst

Playwright Neil LaBute, whose Reasons to be Pretty is currently running at the Lyceum Theater, is known as a provocateur, but his show took things to the next level during the play’s April 5 matinee.

A male audience member was so incensed by actress Marin Ireland’s character, Steph, that he began verbally assaulting the actress during the performance from his seat, press representatives have confirmed. The theatergoer was enraged by a searing monologue delivered during the show’s first act, when Steph publicly delivers a laundry list of humiliating facts about her ex-boyfriend in order to humiliate him after his insensitivity hurts her feelings. The ticketholder reportedly called Ireland a “bitch,” among other expletives, before being escorted from the theater. The incident was not part of the production.

Ireland and scene partner Thomas Sadoski took the outburst in stride, continuing with the show as if nothing had happened. Security has been raised at the theater in response to the incident.

The third play in LaBute’s trilogy of works on the country’s obsession with beauty, Reasons to Be Pretty follows a tightknit circle of factory workers as 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 Ireland. When Greg's best buddy Kent Pasquale and Kent's wife, Carly Perabo, also enter into the picture, the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated.