What She Did for Art

On opposite sides of the Thames, two shows display the variety of London theater: My Fair Lady, the hit musical revival at the Royal National, and The Shape of Things, Neil LaBute's spiky quartet that just opened for a four-week run at the Almeida at King's Cross. One is sumptuous and familiarly melodious, the other intimate and jarring. But both, really, tell the same story: a perfectionist with artistic temperament takes the challenge to turn a nobody into a socially attractive commodity. Like George Bernard Shaw and Lerner and Loewe before him, LaBute is updating the...