Mark Fantasia and Alice Darling give splendid performances as Adam and Evelyn, the geeky English literature major and the self-obsessed arts student. Fantasia is wonderful as the unsuspecting victim of Darling’s thoroughly dislikeable Evelyn. Tim Solly and Jessica Barnden are also impressive as Philip and Jenny, the mismatched friends heading for the altar; it’s a pity they do not get to resolve their issues more fully in the second half. Each of these impressive actors takes their character and makes it their own, but ultimately it is the play that lets them down.

Writer Neil LaBute is probably best known for In the Company of Men; this work, The Shape of Things, had its stage premiere in 2001 and was made into a film, also written by LaBute, in 2003. There are a number of things wrong with the script and this adaptation of it: the opening scene is by far the weakest in the play because the dialogue is so awkward; the play has been relocated from small-town middle America to somewhere in Australia (Evelyn grew up in Lane Cove) but the glaring Americanisms in the script have not been similarly adapted; and an interval has been added, ruining the balance of the piece and making the second half anti-climactic.

This play sets out to discuss some of art’s biggest questions: What is art? Is it art just because the artist says so? And is my art your pornography? (A topical question yet again given the little fuss over a vagina at Adelaide Central Studios recently.) And it’s surely no coincidence that the wicked woman who leads her man into temptation is called Evelyn. (Adam and Eve – get it?) LaBute has said his religiosity informs his work, so maybe it’s about that more than art. Whatever the universal truths it sets out to discuss, the sad truth is that the critical twist in the tale is so well foreshadowed that it comes as no surprise and Evelyn’s monologue takes far too long to tell us what we already know. Higher Ground, until August 30.