Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...For obvious reasons, this is a play that takes actors with a certain courage. And Joe Jahraus' intense production has very credible performances -- from Darrell W. Cox as the shallow but handsome dude, scared of what his friends will say, to the slippery Eric Burgher as his satanic best friend. As the overweight single, Deborah Hearst deftly layers her anger, kindness and insecurity. And the best work of the night is from Katie Crawford as a jilted thin woman -- with fat rage."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...As with all of LaBute's plays, "Fat Pig" -- now receiving a splendidly acted, pitch-perfect Chicago premiere at Profiles Theatre -- is a provocative and disturbing examination of the way our public and private selves don't quite match up or measure up. A deep but also hugely entertaining meditation on the limits of (and barriers to) love, it also homes in on the toxic effects of peer pressure -- a phenomenon that endures well beyond adolescence."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Profiles Theatre handles Neil LaBute’s disturbing, darkly funny and painfully honest play beautifully. They’ve had practice. The company delivered a finely honed production of LaBute’s “autobahn” earlier this year. This smartly cast, well-acted production features taut direction by Joe Jahraus, who knows the value of the uncomfortable pause and uses it wisely."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Darrell W. Cox and Deborah Hearst are superb as the ill-fated lovers, displaying a chemistry at odds with the stereotype that a woman can't be both heavy and attractive. From the moment they meet, you hope against hope that things work out for them."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Playwright Neil LaBute pours this into a 100-minute play with punchy and honest dialogue, sparked by his keen ear for dead-on realistic speech. Director Joe Jahraus’ nearly-perfect cast of three Profiles veterans and one debut artist (Hearst) all deliver the goods in gripping performances."
Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...Joe Jahraus' deliberately paced staging is relentlessly realistic, the byplay so natural we're eavesdropping....it's Hearst's rawboned Helen who carries this urban parable. Her necessarily larger-than-life performance is a wrenching amalgam of good-hearted equanimity, delirious hope, and emotional evacuation."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...For LaBute’s psychologically grotesque comedy Fat Pig to click, there are three essential, non-substitutable ingredients: a punchy, vulnerable leading man with washboard abs; a believably psychotic, castrating bitch who makes mouths water when she dons a bikini; and—most important—a beautiful, funny and obese leading lady who’s unafraid to play a love scene in her bra and panties. Profiles has them, as well as one of the year’s most unsettlingly funny, viscerally wrenching plays."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...LaBute has captured the essence of characters strongly controlled by office peer pressure where the images require that only the young and slim are the beautiful people. LaBute aptly defines the gutless, weak personality of the males ‘people-pleaser’ (Tom).and the cruel judgmental Carter. Without giving away the plot twists, LaBute offers a snapshot of the influence of a person’s weight on human relations, both direct and indirect."
