Modern Spokane follows LaBute in playwright’s pursuit of ‘Happy’

Neil LaBute isn’t a crowd-pleasing playwright. His characters tend to be misanthropic, petty and prone to cruel behavior. His dialogue is cutting, acerbic and peppered with four-letter words. And his stories rarely tie themselves up neatly, often ending with a last-second punch line designed to send you stumbling out of the theater in a daze.

But the plays of the onetime Spokane Valley resident aren’t just shocking explorations of bad manners: LaBute is a thoughtful, perceptive writer, and like David Mamet, he revels in exploring our worst tendencies and finding what makes us tick.

The Modern Theater continues its penchant for edgy, adult material with a production of LaBute’s 2013 black comedy “Reasons to Be Happy,” premiering tonight at the Spokane location. “Happy” is a companion piece to LaBute’s 2008 play “Reasons to Be Pretty,” which the Modern produced in January.

That show’s director, Dawn Taylor Reinhardt, has returned with the same cast for “Happy,” though Reinhardt says you don’t need to have seen the first play to understand this one. She also warns that the show’s language is decidedly R-rated: “There’s one moment where my mouth falls open,” she said, “and I’m not very easy to shock.”

“Reasons to Be Pretty” centered on two troubled couples – Greg (Ryan Shore) and Steph (Molly Tage), who had been dating for four years, and their friends Kent (Nich Witham) and Carly (Jennie Oliver), who are married. “Happy” picks up three years later, and Greg and Steph have broken up; Kent and Carly remain together, but their relationship is on shaky ground.

These characters are still in their 20s, with all the possibilities of the future laid out before them. But love has a tendency to complicate things, and LaBute forces each of his characters to truly and bluntly appraise their relationships.

“Ultimately, it’s about making choices and sacrifices – sacrifices that we as human beings are willing to make to be happy,” Reinhardt said.

Actors and directors don’t often get to return to familiar characters in the same setting, Reinhardt said. Already having a feel for LaBute’s language and the identities of these four characters helped her cast get back into the groove.

“This time around, it’s a little bit easier, because we’re used to the rhythm of the way LaBute writes,” she said. “The actors were able to go into it knowing what their learning curve was going to be; his dialogue is very difficult to memorize. … As for the characters, we already had a baseline for them. It was just, how far have they grown? What have they been doing in the last three years? Did they grow? Have they changed?”

But Reinhardt says the emotional impact of the show is going to be different for everyone: Whatever you think of the characters and their choices will depend on each viewer’s personal experiences.

“Part of me wants to say, ‘It doesn’t really have a message,’ but it does,” Reinhardt said. “But it’s whatever that is for you. What this play had me think about more than anything was my personal journey to where I am today. … Every age is going to react differently; every generation is going to react differently. The longer we’ve experienced life and tried to figure out what it is that makes us happy, you’re going to react differently.”