For this year’s Brave New Looks selection, the Centaur Theatre chose Montreal playwright Michaela di Cesare’s latest work Extra/Beautiful/U. Produced by Infinitheatre, this searing exploration about the concepts of inner and outer beauty is playing at the Centaur until December 9.
The story centres around Lara (Madeleine Scovil), an aspiring model and reality TV star who grew up in St. Leonard. After losing her nose and lips during a horrific car accident, Lara enters hospital to undergo experimental facial reconstruction surgery. The surgery is conducted by Dr. Sam Gagliardi (Cara Rebecca), who was a classmate of Lara’s during their elementary and high school years in St. Leonard. However, that didn’t mean they were the best of friends. In fact, Dr. Gagliardi hopes to use this experimental surgery on Lara not exactly as an act of revenge, but as a means to solidify her reputation as a facial reconstructive surgeon and increase funding for future research.
On top of that, Lara’s sister Louise (Stephanie Torriani), who has Down Syndrome, is a frequent user of social media to state her case of gaining her personal independence by wanting to move out of her home and live with her new boyfriend, much to the chagrin of her overprotective mother (Toni Ellwand). When Louise uses her Tik Tok account to announce her sister’s surgery, it opens a whole Pandora’s Box that causes a great deal of family tensions, opening up of old wounds, and even a case of fallen idol syndrome that happens to Beaute (Sean Ryan), the transgender nurse who assists Dr. Gagliardi with the surgery. mainly out of her idolized worship of Lara during her time on the reality show.
Written with plenty of anger, envy, tension and a dash of humour, Extra/Beautiful/U is a play that gives new meaning to the phrase beauty is skin deep. It successfully breaks through the vainglorious, self-centered attitude that a person with beauty on the surface equals success and popularity, and those without are condemned to hurt, insults and obscurity. And Lara wears a surgical mask and facial bandages throughout the play to mask the realities that she has to accept when this near tragic situation radically changes her life, and forces her realizes that her life, like her face, won’t be the same again when she was beautiful in the eyes of the TV viewing and social media world that once adored her.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but this excellent cast shows us why the pill that is beauty can be a bitter one.
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