Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Joe Jahraus' production is staged in the old National Pastime Theatre, now Profiles' Main Stage. It's a much bigger space than the other theater up the street and it will take time for Profiles to adjust. At this juncture, the show is insufficiently enveloping, and full-on environmental impact needs to remain one of Profiles greatest strengths. The other issue in play is that Cox struggles to present a sufficiently normative character in the early stages of this drama — his guy is uncouth, granted, but still needs to be recognizable by type — to let his scene partner take focus and unveil her personal house of horrors. Lowe, a genteel actress with a powerful sting, is well cast here and she's aptly irritating and yet empathetic. LaBute knows where the bodies are buried with female characters of this type and he needles his way under Betty's polished surface, as he does so well."
Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...LaBute’s play is primarily about the lies people tell themselves and each other, and about the way lies can become increasingly pernicious and escalate to a point that is out of control. Even more, the play is about the not-so-quiet desperation of a woman who realizes she has lost the instant allure of her more youthful beauty and become more or less “transparent” to men. (This is the subject of the best writing in the play, and Lowe, who recently played a memorable Blanche DuBois, gives it her all.)"
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...This locked-room drama could easily be played as a British-style thriller, all twitchy silences and sideways glances, but without Darrell W. Cox and Natasha Lowe emoting a storm as noisily volatile as the thunderclaps and electrical failures that Jeffrey Levin injects at well-timed intervals, we might miss an almost invisible moment that introduces the possibility of this entire convoluted scenario being a Who's-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf-meets-House-of-Yes charade—thus rendering its theme a debate on moral tolerance, as director Joe Jahraus' playbill note proclaims it."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...At the end of the day, LaBute seems to be saying we're all—progressive or conservative—trying to make sense of life and get by. Making Betty and Bobby a brother and sister suggests our common humanity. It's a valid argument that he makes clearly, if more intellectually than viscerally. Between his unraveling of the mystery and establishing what he can of the characters, it's a lot to do in ninety minutes."
Centerstage - Somewhat Recommended
"... If you promise often enough that you’re telling the truth, does that make it true, or is there always more to uncover? That’s what Neil LaBute asks in “In a Forest, Dark and Deep,” but unfortunately he neglects to turn this same sharp inquiry on himself, so the audience experiences the strange sensation of watching characters that ring false acting out a story obsessed with uncovering falsehoods."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...The dichotomies LaBute sets up between the pair—Bobby as the coarse, vulgar but apparently moral blue-collar guy, versus Betty’s educated amorality—telegraph which side the playwright’s on. He gives Betty a couple of long speeches about love and loss, buoyed here by Lowe’s convincing delivery, that would seem like plays to reverse his misogynist reputation—if they weren’t undercut by both Bobby and LaBute shaming her alleged sluttiness and ultimately casting her as a ruiner of men’s lives."
Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended
"...Cox is as comfortable in Bobby’s head as Bobby is in beer and flannel. He is both a shambling brother and an astute observer who spots his sister’s manipulative devices the instant she deploys them, and thus he is the audience’s agent in this saga. Cox’s Bobby cares grudgingly about Betty and in the end proves it in the most stalwart manner, but he is also jealous of her success in the world, which is a grotesque joke to him considering all the grief and embarrassment she once brought upon the family."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...The narrative may be sappy, but LaBute is still a master at creating attention-grabbing female characters and he’s given Portman some great emotional dialogue to chew on. Cox also has his moments of verbal explosion as Bobby probes to uncover his sister’s secrets. Together the duo gives the spectators a feast of high intensity and high decibel acting. Under Joe Jahraus’ direction, Cox and Portman make watchable a pair of characters who could be shrill and unpleasant, but the play still demands a high tolerance for melodrama. So patrons who can accept In a Forest, Dark and Deep as a showcase for two volcanic performances should enjoy an entertaining evening."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...This 90 minute dark mystery unravels in tortured conflict that will surprise you as your loyalties shift from brother to sister and back again. Will the truth really set anyone free? See this show and you be the judge. It is 90 minutes of smart, nicely acted theatre."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Nobody unleashes LaBute’s meanness and, oddly, mercy better than Jahraus. In Cox and Lowe he finds the perfect exponents for the author’s devilishly mixed messages. Profiles has christened its latest theater with a characteristic mixture of cunning and conviction."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Recommended
"...LaBute’s characters are perfect Profiles’ staged personas: raging, tense, egocentric. Nobody does blistering confrontation like Profiles. (I’m always wary of someone getting it with a chicken bone.) And Cox is the master of in-your-face emotion. A fiercely passionate Cox escalates with flailing wild accusations. He’s out-of-control fury! But the brilliance of his performance is his ability to balance it with this laid-back, likable, Texas drawling guy. Cox provides the softer side of an antagonist with humor and vulnerability. He’s The Man! It’s hard to find an equal sparring partner for Cox...until now! Lowe controls the story and the room. Her continual sporadic disclosure makes her delivery even more impressively diabolical. She shifts between misunderstood victim and cold-hearted, manipulating bitch. The fight between Cox and Lowe is so in-the-moment and so in-the-room... that I’m biting my tongue to stop from interfering."
Chicago Theater Beat - Recommended
"...What LaBute’s latest work does do is present a slippery, elusive sense of how flawed humans (and that would be all of us) discover truth, and in the discovery, reveal the layered lies that surround it."
Splash Magazine - Somewhat Recommended
"...Also to the play’s credit is the performance of Darrel W. Cox as Bobby. Cox is a tremendous presence throughout the play and, when he is not prowling the stage with seething anger, is able to guilt and needle better than my Jewish grandmother. His counterpart, Natasha Lowe, however is less believable as his sister. Although she does a great job with hysterical and desperate, she is less convincing in transitions and does not make a believable liar."
