By Neil LaBute. Directed by Bart Anderson. Presented by Short, Sharp, and Pointy Productions. At Studio 16 on Monday, November 3. Continues until November 8

Emmelia Gordon is radiant in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, which is not a good script.

Gordon plays Helen, a big woman, who falls in love with Tom, a slim—and shallow—man. Tom luxuriates in Helen’s honesty and in her body, but he’s embarrassed to be seen in public with her. Tom’s coworkers don’t help. Undeterred by futility, jealous Jeannie mounts a campaign to get Tom to marry her, and the relentlessly dickheaded Carter is disgusted by gay people, the elderly, and the disabled, as well as the fat.

When Gordon was on-stage, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her Helen is alluring because she’s so damn present. Gordon knows how to spin a line and tweak a rhythm; I’m convinced she gets more laughs out of the script than are written into it. But she’s also willing to get completely emotionally naked. Just after she’s met the man who will become her beau, Helen says, “I really do hope you call… Just don’t be afraid, Tom.” Gordon’s delivery made me fall in love.

But the play is boring—and consider this a spoiler alert. We know what Tom’s deal is from the beginning and he never really changes. Toward the end, he has a long speech about what a coward he is, but it’s redundant; we’ve watched him being a coward for two acts.

Although the opening scene and some other patches are witty, a lot of the banter is on the level of characters calling one another “asshole”. And big chunks of the script are dull—the dialogue in Helen and Tom’s Japanese-restaurant date, for instance. Director Bart Anderson makes things worse by applying sluggish pacing and interminable scene changes.

I might have a slightly different view of the script if Michael Brian were bringing more to the role of Tom. As it is, he delivers an honest, understated piece of work. And Brian builds to a credible explosion in Act 2 in which Tom finally—and temporarily—acquires a backbone. But the diffidence in Brian’s portrait didn’t allow me for a moment to think that things might turn out well.

Allyson Grant, on the other hand, is working too hard: she makes Jeannie so batshit crazy from the beginning that she has nowhere to go but over the top.

Amazingly, Ryan Hesp makes Carter, the dick, watchable. Carter’s actions are irredeemable and too often predictable. (He asks Tom for a photo of Helen. Do you think he just might share it with the rest of the office?) But Hesp scrapes every bit of pain and intelligence that LaBute offers in the writing and channels it into a stylish performance.

Helen is the only character I wanted to spend any time with, though. She and Gordon both know how to play and they both know how to tell the truth.