Backstage is
Mixed-to-Positive:
"Off-Broadway, under Terry Kinney's hyperrealistic direction, Reasons to Be Pretty had the feel of a documentary. It seemed as if we were watching a surveillance tape from the break room of a Costco-type warehouse, which is where most of the action is set (designer David Gallo accurately re-creates a tacky suburban world of malls, chain stores, and apartment complexes). In the transition to Broadway, there have been cast changes and script tightening?with mixed results. Thomas Sadoski as Greg remains the play's rock. His stumbling journey to manhood forms the through-line, and the actor documents each step with detailed attention in a multilayered performance. Marin Ireland replaces Alison Pill as Steph, and she matches her predecessor's intensity. Piper Perabo has deepened her characterization of Kent's insecure wife, Carly, who knows she's a fox but fears that her looks are all she has. Steven Pasquale gives a caricatured reading of the brutish Kent, lacking the veracity Pablo Schreiber brought to the role.
That may be due to LaBute's cutting of monologues in which the characters revealed their attitudes about their inner psyches and outer beings to the audience. Some called these speeches unnecessary, but Off-Broadway they gave the play a richness it now lacks. We could see deeper into the lives of these blue-collar combatants; it was almost like reading a complex novella. Yes, fiction and drama are two vastly different forms, but in the previous incarnation, LaBute combined the best qualities of both."
http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003958568
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
But big props for throwing in a Sondheim quote.
