"You're the drunk maid, the nerd or the evil stepmom. That's how you get jobs as a plus-size actor," Utley-Bernhardt says after a costume-fitting session trying on Torrid lingerie just days before her first onstage bedroom scene.

Utley-Bernhardt landed the lead role of the girlfriend, Helen, in a play where - you gotta love playwright Neil LaBute for this - all of the play's bite is exposed in its title: "Fat Pig." Pygmalion Productions' regional premiere opens Thursday and runs through Oct. 14.

"Being a romantic lead in a play is a huge step for me, but I'm finding it suits me well," says Utley-Bernhardt during a frank interview in which she reveals her age - "35, but I look like I'm in my late 20s; being overweight, I don't have any wrinkles" - as well as her size - she's 5-foot-4 and 260 pounds.

But size isn't the only thing exposed as the actor prepares to embody a character whose weight undermines her relationship. She claims that the emotional complexities of playing Helen require more courage than preparing to wear slinky lingerie and a swimsuit onstage.

As an actor playing a sexy, confident woman, she feels an obligation "to be a good example for my kind, for fat women." After rehearsals, where Utley-Bernhardt hears how fat her character is for three hours, the actor says it's difficult to go home and eat dinner with her husband. She lost 50 pounds during the past year following the Weight Watchers diet and continues to eat healthy meals during the rehearsal period "even though technically I'm being paid to be fat in the show."

Oh yes, speaking of food, it's written into the script that Helen is eating pizza with gusto as the play begins, and sushi and a hot dog in the next two scenes, the stage business of all that eating much noted by male critics when the play premiered off-Broadway last January. "It's as hard for people in the audience to watch a large person eat," says director Shellie Waters, "as it is for the large person to actually eat in front of people."

"Fat Pig" is just the latest salvo in the mean-spirited battle of the sexes raging in the prolific writer's work. But thanks to the character of Helen's boyfriend, Tom, a role created by "Entourage's" Jeremy Piven, it's hard to know just who is the play's biggest pig. "By contrast to plus-sized Helen, Tom isn't so much a will-o'-the-wisp as a wuss of the will," wrote John Lahr in The New Yorker.

Ask LaBute about the New York critics who found more psychological warmth in "Fat Pig" than his earlier work, and the writer will say this play is part of his ongoing consideration of attractiveness and gender politics in relationships. "If I'm doing the same thing, maybe I'm getting better at it," he says in a phone interview between the opening of his film "The Wicker Man" and the New York premiere of his new play, "Wrecks," starring Ed Harris. "The men, they're learning new and sophisticated ways to hurt each other."

Utahns claim LaBute because he earned a theater degree at Brigham Young University and his 1997 indie film "In the Company of Men," which premiered at Sundance, launched his career as well as that of classmate Aaron Eckhart. Charles Metten, a retired BYU theater professor, terms his former student, the author of plays such as "Bash" and "The Shape of Things," "a modern contemporary Ibsen."

Yet it's because LaÂBute continually sparks controversy for his investigations of misogyny - or possibly misanthropy - that his creation of such a plum role, a romantic lead, for plus-sized female actors seems incongruous or at least deliciously ironic. "Often, oddly enough," the writer says, "the ingenue part for both genders is the least interesting."

Yet for all the revolutionary nature of the big-hearted role of Helen, what makes "Fat Pig" so subversive, so striking, is that the play offers no feel-good "Vagina Monologues" explorations of fat liberation or other feminist-friendly themes. Instead, in classic LaBute style, the drama unfolds against the backdrop of corporate America, which makes the relationship story seem more politically important and less confessional. Tom's colleagues, Jeannie and Carter, act as stand-ins for the audience, their caustic comments dismissing Helen and all fat people, voicing the kind of bigotry that people often think but rarely say.

"The urge to throw rotten vegetables at Carter and me should be intense. I want to throw something at me," says Alexandra Harbold, who plays Jeannie, a character created by "Felicity's" Keri Russell whom Lahr described as "a vacuum with an hourglass figure." "It's not a play you want to clap for. That should be an interesting phenomenon. Maybe there should be no curtain call."

Ask the playwright about his female characters, and he makes the distinction that neither of the women in the play is a victim; rather, both are seeking the same thing: for Tom to be honest about his feelings, which leads to an ending equally dark and inevitable.

"Tom proves himself to be weak, but not cruel or mean," LaBute says. "It's certainly not happy, but at least he found a way to be honest. I know me, I know I'm going to be looking for a bad ending - how can I mess with their day? - but you try to resist that," to be fair to the characters and the individual story, the playwright says.

And at the end of a far-ranging conversation about the weight of the title "Fat Pig," about the play's abrupt ending and his artistic preoccupation with the notion of the malleable nature of physical attraction, comes the question: If you've outgrown the misogyny label, or if it never really fit, is there a label you'd prefer?

"Fruit of the Loom," cracks LaBute over the phone, and then he is off, to face the next project, and the next set of questions about men and women, women and men.

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ELLEN FAGG can be reached via e-mail - at ellenf@ sltrib.com - or at 801-257-8621. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@ sltrib.com.

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