By Kimberly Rau

Good art is often worth a drive (yes, even to Rhode Islanders!), and that’s what the actors at the Glass Horse Project are striving create with “The Shape of Things,” taking a script that relies on heavily tropes (the alpha male, the ruthless woman, the nerd, the “good girl”) and finding nuance and subtlety in all the right places.

For those unfamiliar with either the stage show or 2003 film, the Neil LaBute script surrounds a nerdy college professor, Adam, who finds love–or so he thinks–in the arms of graduate student Evelyn. Through her he becomes cooler, more attractive, and even though some of his friendships suffer along the way, he’s happy. That is until he finds out that things with Evelyn aren’t what they seem in the most heartbreaking way imaginable.

“The show gets played a very specific way, for shock value, and the twist at the end,” said Korey Pimental, who plays the role of Adam and is also the manager for Glass Horse project. “We’re trying to create a more human production.” One way they’re doing that is by plumbing the depths the relationship between Adam and his friend Philip.

“There’s a genuine friendship there,” Pimental says. Geoffrey Besser, who plays Phillip, said they attempted to look below the toxic masculinity that touches the character’s life.

“[The fallout of their friendship] is genuinely painful,” Besser added. “This is a human.” Phillip also loses a relationship with his girlfriend Jenny (played Monica Hartford) in the show, after “Hurricane Evelyn,” as Besser calls her, interferes too much in their lives. Suddenly, that strong façade is exposed for the thin veil it really is.

Kerri Lamothe, who plays the calculating and heartless Evelyn, has a much harder job finding her humanity, considering that almost everything she does in the show turns out to be insincere.

“Pretty much all of my character work comes from a five and a half page monologue [at the end of the show],” Lamothe said. “Everything else is 100 percent calculated. She’s coming from a very controlled place, where everyone has controlled her. She’s taking her experiences and turning them on someone else.”

Still, cold as she may be, director Taylor Corbett said they didn’t want Evelyn to come across as truly sociopathic. “She is heavily messed up,” Corbett concedes, and, perhaps in light of that, she and Lamothe worked to infuse the plot with moments of Evelyn’s doubt in her actions towards Adam and highlight her more often overlooked characteristics.. “Otherwise [Evelyn] is just a plot device,” concluded Corbett.

The play is about art, academia, societal expectations and shining a light of some of the not-so-nice aspects of humanity, including our tendencies to try and “fix” our friends. One way Corbett has showcased this is by making the deliberate choice to cast a disabled actor as Adam. Pimental is open about the fact that he created Glass Horse in 2014 in large part because he was finding his physical limitations made other directors hesitant to cast him. Taking on the role of Adam is especially poignant for Pimental, who says that in the past, people have expressed surprise that he could act well. To work on a show like this, he said, “sucks for [character] Adam, but it’s great for Korey.”

But this isn’t a “gotcha” moment so much as a new way to look at the entire script. Adam, as written, is essentially a giant makeover project for Evelyn, and putting someone with physical limitations in the role changes a lot of the trajectory of the plot.

According to the cast, the inclusion Adam having a disability also creates the opportunity for dialogue around the notion that people with different needs are often held up as “inspirational” for operating in the same areas as everyone else. Evelyn, of course, just sees opportunity, which makes the sucker punch at the end even more damning.

“The way the characters interact with [Adam] have completely changed,” Pimental said. “It definitely takes a show that reads as shock value for the sake of shock value and gives it a backbone.” In a world of black and white, fast decisions, Glass Horse Project’s The Shape of Things may be the moment of reflection theatergoers are looking for.

The Shape of Things plays for one weekend only, May 30–June 1, in the shared artists’ space at the Co-Creative Center, 137 Union St., New Bedford, MA. In an effort to make theater accessible for those at all income levels, tickets are free or pay-what-you-can, with all donations going towards future productions and actor stipends. This show contains strong language and adult themes and is not suitable for children. For more information, visit the show’s public Facebook link at https://www.facebook.com/events/825786904448391/ or email [email protected] .