When you live in big city like New York one doesn't have to look far to see a giant billboard of a model adorned with the latest garb, and you are likely to pass over a hundred subway commercials showing you an overload of products and services you simply cannot live without. You might try and escape to your digital device for solace, only to be met with a never-ending thread of nudges trying to get you to purchase something. Ultimately, these products are all selling a similar idea, beauty which equals more sex. Cosmetics to improve your looks, services to improve your home and your looks, items to accessorize your life - so YOU can be more beautiful, stay young, and have an abundance of hot sex.  

Playwright Joshua Harmon, who is a born and bred New Yorker, has clearly witnessed the mania around beauty and how we have tried to convince ourselves that beauty lies within. There's a keyword in that sentence, lies. The proof is there, people leave their partners for younger versions, good looking people are favored in job interviews  (on a subconscious level), and our generation would rather replace than repair. Harmon wants to know: If beauty isn't everything, why is it the only thing? He poses a damn good question that is layered far beyond the 120 minutes in Elliot Isaac's West Village home - which happens to be pristine and GORGEOUS!

Idina Menzel (Jodi) appears to be the only person who can see this insanity playing out around her as she tries to deal with her ex-husband marrying a woman half her age. In search of healing she heads to her father Elliot's home in New York to celebrate his 70th birthday with her son, only to meet his MUCH younger partner Trey. Trey is the same age as her son Benjamin, who happens to be gay.

At times this all feels a bit extreme but Harmon will have you laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. His script has been designed to mimic the world far beyond the clean-cut corners of this designer home, serviced by the mostly-silent staff. Their presence feels uncomfortable and forced but how different is there cleaning and dusting the home to our mascara and self-tan? Trey's character represents "beauty"- he is garish, immature, rude, uneducated, and simple in every sense of the world. He is also chiselled like a statue, perfectly tanned and personifies everything one might label as beautiful (in a jock strap) - this eye candy is on the house! As we get to know Trey everyone starts to fall into the conviction that maybe beauty is within...