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Credits

Opening Date: Mar 27, 2005; Lead Performances: Amanda Peet and Ben Stiller; Writer: Neil LaBute; Director: George C. Wolfe
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By Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown is a senior writer for EW and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio -- he has the tote bag to prove it

It goes something like this: The prolific Neil LaBute (Bash, The Shape of Things, Fat Pig, probably another one by the time you read this) wanted to write a play about race. Then he wanted to write a play about gender. Then he taped the two ideas together and put it on stage at the Public Theater. Ben Stiller, Jeffrey Wright, and Amanda Peet bring a lot of energy to this obverse, perverse Othello, which trades the Cyprian wars for simmering suburban tension. But the play's agonized ''shocks'' and ''twists'' reveal, as never before, something rigged and immature about LaBute's fashionably dim view of human nature.

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Posted Apr 18, 2005
 

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