Neil LaBute didn't set out to create a trilogy of plays about our obsession with appearance when he wrote his twist-filled Pygmalion tale, The Shape of Things, in 2001. But then he came up with another play on the subject, 2004's Fat Pig. And in 2008, a third one, Reasons To Be Pretty.

So voila`, the busy playwright-screenwriter-director had crafted a trilogy.

``It wasn't until I was going into the third one that I thought about that,'' says a cheerful LaBute, chatting on his cellphone from California, where he's in post-production for the upcoming Chris Rock comedy Death at a Funeral. ``And each of them has two men and two women.''

That third play also became the prolific LaBute's first to move to Broadway, earning him a best play Tony Award nomination last spring. And on Saturday, a new production of Reasons To Be Pretty kicks off the 2009-2010 season at GableStage.

Joseph Adler, the company's artistic director, has done all three of LaBute's appearance-themed plays as well as another one, This Is How It Goes. He acknowledges that he's a LaBute fan and has wanted to do Reasons To Be Pretty since he saw it Off-Broadway in 2008.

``LaBute is the kind of playwright who hits the audience in a visceral way,'' Adler says. ``He's an exciting, observant writer, and he always goes to the edge. I'm grateful that we have a voice like his -- and that he's so prolific.''

Though it explores many facets of relationships, including staying stuck in a pairing (or a job) that isn't going anywhere, Reasons To Be Pretty certainly is about looks and their emotional/psychological repercussions. It kicks off with a raging argument between longtime couple Greg and Steph over Greg's not-meant-to-be-shared remark that Steph (as opposed to the hot new girl in the warehouse store where three of the characters work) has a ``regular'' face.

LaBute, himself a ``regular'' guy with glasses, curly hair and a somber look in photos, is a former Mormon who made his reputation with plays about cruelly conniving guys and people with sometimes-terrible secrets. He says the reaction to Greg and Steph's conflict tends to go along gender lines.

``Most women hope that if someone asks their boyfriend, `Hey, do you have the most beautiful girlfriend in the world?,' he'd say yes. They want the guy they're with to find them beautiful,'' he says.

Adler found that casting Steph, the woman with the ``regular'' face, was a little like casting the zaftig title character in Fat Pig: How do you tell a performer you want her to play a not-so-pretty woman?

Erin Joy Schmidt, a South Florida actor making her GableStage debut as Steph, just laughs about it.

``When I read the play, I thought, `Wow. OK. Why did he think of me?' '' she says, laughing. ``But that's so selfish and stupid . . . Acting teachers always said to me, `You're not going to play the pretty girl.' So I understand some of the stuff Steph goes through.''

UNSETTLING ROLE

Ricky Waugh is playing Greg, Steph's soon-to-be-ex, at GableStage. He was in a far more disturbing LaBute play, In a Dark, Dark House, last season at Plantation's Mosaic Theatre. But Waugh, a fine actor who began to get leading parts only after he lost more than 100 pounds four years ago, is finding Reasons To Be Pretty a more unsettling experience.

``I've never played a character so close to me,'' he says. ``This has an uncanny resemblance to my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. But theater is therapy. I lived for 26 years being overweight, but I had a great life. Maybe this is a karmic realignment. Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed by the feeling that bad things will happen to me . . . I think everyone has self-esteem issues to some degree.''

Todd Allen Durkin and Amy Elane Anderson play Kent and Carly, the blue-collar husband and wife who are Greg's co-workers. Adler says Durkin is playing ``the quintessential LaBute Neanderthal'' in Reasons To Be Pretty.

`PLAY THE DUALITY'

It is the actor's third LaBute play, and Durkin thinks it's the author's best.

``This is just a well-structured play. Everyone gets on him about the way he works twists into his scripts, but this is straightforward,'' he says. ``Why is he so obsessed about appearance? I don't know. On the surface, that seems superficial. But when you read his scripts, there's so much going on underneath all of that. The key is to be able to play the duality.''

LaBute was as surprised as anyone when Reasons To Be Pretty was the play that finally landed him on Broadway, a place he calls ``a petting zoo, where people can gawk at stars.'' He thought Fat Pig and The Mercy Seat, a post-9/11 play, ``both had stronger hooks.'' Yet though he loves writing for both movies and theater, he knows what only theater can do.

``I appreciate the everyday magic of the theater. The audience will suspend disbelief and go wherever you want it to,'' he says. ``And in theater, you can say more of what you want to say about anything.''

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.

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