BWW Blog: Director Gary Condes on Neil LaBute's SOME GIRL(S)

When I was first approached to direct this play I wasn't sure I wanted to do it. Some Girl(s) has a main character who appears, on first and second reading, to be a prize c*ckwho exhibits a host of unflattering male traits. On the page he was not a likeable man. Add to that the play's simplistic and seemingly undramatic form, basically four two-handers in a row taking place in one hotel room - I didn't respond warmly to it.

But there was something in the humour and irony of the piece, the razor-sharp dialogue and the exploration of human behaviour in sexual relationships that intrigued me and kept me curious. There was something both new and familiar about it that I felt it worked in micro and macro. So, as with any nagging dissatisfied feeling I have, I continued to ask questions. I read the play a number of times more, sat with it and began asking the simple and essential questions I always ask when penetrating a piece of work. Why? What does that mean? With these trusty shovels I began to dig and try to understand the point of this play and what Neil LaBute was getting at.

People either love or hate LaBute's work; some even find it offensive. But his plays always serve to provoke discussions about human behaviour. And in questioning human behaviour and, particularly in this case, male behaviour, it becomes not about whether his work is offensive, but whether his offensiveness is helpful in illuminating human truths. That was my motivation - in staging Some Girl(s), could we learn something from this play?

Stories about the battle between the sexes are nothing new, but Some Girl(s) provided me with a timely opportunity to crack open the contemporary male psychology and examine, via the play's protagonist, a specific lack of self-awareness.

Through careful analysis, improvisation and rehearsals I began to see the piece as a serio-comic picaresque, a kind of cross between Voltaire's Candide and Neil Simon's The Last of the Red Hot Lovers. It's a physical and psychological quest into the male psyche's blind spot that prevents him from truly connecting with and then committing to the love of his life when it's presented to him.

In travelling the length and breadth of America to visit his ex-girlfriends so that he can make amends before he gets married, the male protagonist comes face to face with the trail of destruction he created by his womanising. Slowly, he comes to terms with and accepts the mistakes he has made in his relationships. The biggest revelation? He ran away from the love of his life because of his fear of commitment. But now it's too late to get her back. Too little too late.

So, what can modern audiences learn from this play? For me Some Girl(s) is a cautionary tale about true love coming along once in a lifetime. It's a modern fable about taking the chance to love when it presents itself. You must take your chances when they come. And the fear that it creates is a sure sign that it needs investigating. You only get one true chance, so don't run away. Face it. It's the only way you'll grow as a human.

With this in mind, I hope to provide a thought-provoking night at the theatre, which takes the audience on a psychological journey of self-discovery. I hope to leave them laughing indignantly at the games we play in navigating sexual relationships and the little atrocities we visit on each other in the process. And I hope I manage to shine a light in a corner of a truth bright enough for us to take a real look at ourselves and change how we go about conducting relationships - particularly men.

As Neil LaBute says: "Nothing we do on stage matters as much as life - nothing I write means as much as somebody else's birth, marriage, retirement or death - but if writers and actors and audience can band together and play out a few stories that feel honestly created and genuinely inhabited then maybe we can find some kind of solace together for a few hours, reminding ourselves that we are all in this together and that maybe, just maybe, a false version of the truth can lead us toward how and why we should go about living the real thing."

Some Girl(s) is at Park Theatre 14 July-6 August

Watch a video about the show below

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