This Is How It Goes

Synopsis

This Is How It Goes is about a young man who moves in with married couple Cody and Belinda Phipps, both of whom were in his class at school. Cody was the high school jock and the only black guy in the school; Belinda was the high school cheerleader. The new housemate's presence in the couple's seemingly stable family life exposes deep uncomfortable truths about all three of them. These truths are questionable however, as the story is being told through the eyes of the young man. As the events unfold and scenes are played out differently, we see both the perversion of the truth and the narrator's mind.

Our Review:

1 June 2005

In the space of just eight nights, London has had two consecutive openings of new plays by the American playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute, but a little LaBute is starting to go a long way. After last week’s opening of Some Girls at the Gielgud, the Donmar are now presenting This is How it Goes, a new staging of a play that was originally premiered at Off-Broadway’s Public Theatre in March; the prolific playwright has also had a third new play open in New York in the last six months called Fat Pig. The trouble is not so much a case of having too much of a good thing but instead nagging doubts are arising as to whether the thing is good at all.

All is never what it seems on the surface in a LaBute play, and as he starts to excavate beneath it, you can be sure of one thing only: that just as his characters constantly dupe and delude each other and themselves, another no less sinister game is being played out on the audience...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 21 June 2005:

On the whole, I agree with Mark Shenton on this. There's some great dialogue here and all three performances are spot on (it's smashing to see Ben chaplin on stage again) but the "clever" structure and plotting becomes tiresome rather than intriguing. Still worth seeing though. I did feel the show was directed to be viewed only from the centre sections of the Donmar...it really felt like a proscenium arch production plonked into the Donmar's specific space without being reblocked....

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