Bash: Latter Day Plays, a filmed performance of three one-act plays, should satisfy fans of writer-director Neil LaBute, as his mordant wit and his cynical view of human nature are on full display. LaBute makes no effort to open the play up, and his simple presentation puts the burden on his actors to put his words across. Calista Flockhart and Ron Eldard deliver engrossing performances. Paul Rudd fares less well, hampered by LaBute's script, which has him deliver the most horrific information in an impossibly cheerful, offhand manner. It's effectively chilling, but it strains credulity to think that this young man feels no ambivalence, let alone remorse, about the carnage he's unleashed. It's similar to the treatment of Jason Patric's hateful character, Cary, in Your Friends and Neighbors. LaBute, in the first play, "Gaggle of Saints" seems more interested in shocking the audience than in exploring the basic humanity of "bad" people. The second and third plays are more complex and interesting, because while the characters Flockhart and Eldard play are certainly guilty of atrocious behavior, their obvious distress over what they've done makes it impossible to dismiss them as monsters. Both actors show impressive power. Flockhart transforms herself from a bubble-headed preppie in the first play to an emotionally scarred, prematurely aged woman in "Medea Redux," the second. LaBute displays a keen insight into this woman's psyche, as she describes the terrible thing she's done, linked inexorably to her feeling that the universe was "laughing" at her. Eldard is equally unsettling in the third play, "Iphigenia in Orem." His genially misogynistic Mormon murderer is a case study in the banality of evil. LaBute does an excellent job here of slowly unraveling a complicated and ugly tale.
by Josh Ralske
review
