"Don't ever change!" is the earnest advice of the Beautiful People in a new play by Chance Whitmire '94, which opened to an ample crowd at the Hopkins Center Saturday afternoon.
"The Beautiful People Die Twice" explores materialistic attitudes towards beauty in modern North American society. Set at the perfume counter of a department store, the play describes a single day in the lives of customers and salespersons, in a world where being ugly is the worst possible crime.
Whitmire slowly and masterfully builds a dialectic between his "Beautiful People," Saint (Aliza Waksal '96) and Keller (David Harbour '97) on the one hand, and the not-so-beautiful Talon (Heather Nolan '94) and Mike (Joey Hood '96) on the other. An eventual conflict of the two camps is the main event of the play.
The divergent viewpoints of Whitmire's well-defined characters maintain our interest and add variety to the essential conflict.
The lovable Talon is a feisty, though somewhat repressed, sales clerk. Her friend Mike is a homosexual and an inveterate realist.
The wealthy Keller struggles with a terminal illness, and Saint at once woos and repulses us with her vacuous charm. The relations of these four illustrate the complications of class and gender in this drama of narcissism and self-delusion.
Acting and production are solid on all hands, but the greatest strength of "The Beautiful People Die Twice" is the script itself. Remarkably witty and effective, the dialogue produces an intense humor in the play, often in unexpected places.
However, Whitmire's infrequent philosophizing fails to meet the standard of his comedic vision. Expect to be impressed with this play's hilarity, not its attempted profundity.
This minor flaw notwithstanding, "The Beautiful People Die Twice" is highly entertaining and is an outstanding example of Dartmouth dramatic excellence from script to stage.
