Reasons to be Pretty

Holy shit this play is good, y'all. Reasons to be Pretty is, hands down, the best thing I've seen on Broadway since Boeing Boeing late last summer.  (Since then I've seen a number of mostly disappointing plays, including Hedda Gabler and, unfortunately, Equus, with Speed the Plow being a highlight due in large part to Raul Esparza's fantastic improv)  It was laugh out loud funny—so funny that the elderly people in my section shushed me—and just generally emotionally spot on.  It felt like something that was written for and acted by my generation.  At the surface, it is a play about the necessity to be seen as pretty, or beautiful or, really, anything other than "regular."  But as you dig deeper, it becomes a coming of age play in which the main characters realize that their lives are less happy and fulfilling than they wanted to believe (here, it reminded me of a more humorous and way less depressing Revolutionary Road) and uncovers how they, in general, fuck everything up trying to get out of their current states of being.  

Discount tickets for the show surprisingly abound, so do yourself a favor and go see it.  Laugh, want to cry and, at the end, take the subway home, surrounded by billboards and advertisements full of people who are exceptionally beautiful, and think about how easy it actually can be to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.