Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...LaBute certainly has made this into a viable and wickedly amusing stage piece: there are a few necessary additions of modern electronics, and changes in office-speak, but it's otherwise reasonably close to the screenplay. The design, by Thad Hallstein, is a very clever jigsaw puzzle of a set, so you don't feel in any way like you're lost in a multi-locale movie; rather that the offices and urinals and bedrooms are all sprouting from the same well, so to speak. These characters divide their time between them with such easy fluidity, it's not entirely surprising they mix up what is appropriate where."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...This play is both painful and horrifying to sit through. And while I don't make it a practice to "review the audience," one of the most disturbing things about watching it with a full house Sunday night was the raucous laughter it often generated. This is a show about emotional torture. True, on some deep level it may also be about how fragile the male ego can be in the face of rejection, but it is an in-your-face assault on women."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Director Rick Snyder has guided In the Company of Men's return to its stage roots immaculately with great performances all around in the company."
Northwest Indiana Times - Recommended
"...The world premiere of "In the Company of Men," by resident artist Neil LaBute and directed by resident artist Rick Snyder at Profiles Theatre on The Main Stage at 4139 N. Broadway until June 30, gives an imaginative and twisted look at this topic delving into the ladder climbing employee world."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...In the Company of Men challenges our belief that most people in our daily lives like neighbors or co-workers are, if not always kind, at least neutral toward us most of the time and only motivated to take action against someone else when their own self-interest is threatened. The thought that there are people who are deliberately cruel as an end in itself is deeply disturbing and one that haunts after our viewing of this black comedy is over."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Steppenwolf's Nick Snyder expertly directs this talented ensemble to bring LaBute's Theatre-of-Cruelty to life. Jessica Honor Carleton is sweetly earnest and heartrending as Christine. Although not hearing-impaired, she's mastered the speech patterns of someone who's never heard the human voice. Brennan Roche is a sadly likable, easily-manipulated Howard, but it's Jordan Brown's charming, cruel, immoral anti-hero Chad who stands out, haunting you long after the final blackout."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...Chad (Jordan Brown, giving a virtuosic comic douchebag performance) and Howard (Brennan Roche), two young and recently scorned power players at the same company, set out to turn the tables on their perceived string of misfortune by targeting an innocent bystander. When their chosen victim, deaf executive assistant Christine (Jessica Honor Carleton), becomes a legitimate object of affection, LaBute's black comedy evolves into a nuanced satire of misrepresentations of strength and the privileged class. Snyder could lose the intrusive sound cues dropped in from the feature film, but his 1990s-influenced production adds an additional layer of generational criticism."
ShowBizChicago - Highly Recommended
"...Although achieving its greatest success in its 1997 film adaptation, Profiles' resident artist Neil LaBute's "In The Company of Men" was first written and performed as a play, and the revised stage version comes wonderfully off the screen once again at Profiles Theatre in Chicago under the direction of Rick Snyder."
Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended
"...This show is a piece of work, charged by director Rick Snyder with the tension of a murder mystery and raised off the page into palpable life by three skilled actors. The end comes with a pair of twists, the first as from an unseen knife, a switchblade; the second in shouted vowels and consonants that make no sound at all."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...'Bad boy' Neil LaBute's play In the Company of Men-newly revised in a relentless and gutsy production at Profiles Theater under director Rick Snyder-recasts the courtly rakes of yesteryear as the droves of button-up'ed, white-collar yuppie shit-heads currently lubricating the engine of America's FIRE economy."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Somewhat Recommended
"...Despite a lack of overall urgency in the storyline, Director Rick Snyder effectively builds the tension. During scene transitions, Snyder uses pounding tribal music to set the-hunt-is-on feel. The drum beat definitely gives the show an edgy vibration. Snyder also uses his talented trio to pull us into this cruel world scam. The dashing Brennan Roche (Howard) rages on about work and women. Roche plays it perfectly pompous with a side of brute. He truly is the bad boy the girls go for. On the other hand, Jordan Brown (Chad) endears as the coerced nice guy. Showing the most depth, Brown goes from wounded to mad to bumbly to charming to mad. And the girl getting all the attention is Jessica Honor Carleton (Christine). Carleton is just lovely as a bright-eyed innocent. She impressively uses a guttural speaking voice to convey her disability."
Chicago Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...When it comes to crafting twisted tales of men behaving badly, Neil LaBute is a master. Scan through the playwright's body of work and you'll find a psychological horror show, a well-crafted parade of cruelty and mind-games. So it goes with In the Company of Men, a tale of two businessmen and the hapless young deaf woman they target. Directed to chilling impact by Rick Snyder for Profiles' Theatre, the 90-minute piece peels back the facade on entitled, violent, men who are driven by fear and rage."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Recommended
"...La Bute has the courage of his emotional brutality. There is no happy ending and Chad isn't given some easy psychological explanation for his abominable behavior. He is what he is, an insinuating cad with no excuses. La Bute is known for his contemptible males (consider "Fat Pig" and "Some Girl(s)", both staged beautifully at the Profiles). But Chad goes to the head of the line in the playwright's gallery of treacherous but perversely charming guys. Male spectators might not leave the theater feeling good about their gender, but the entire audience will depart knowing its been taken on an engrossing if perverse ride."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...LaBute’s brand of gutsy, in-your-face, confrontation-theater can quickly get under your skin and into your blood. Every time you see a LaBute drama – and this show is definitely a must-see – you have to wash your hands and maybe perform some kind of psychic exorcism, just to prove that you could never, never be the likes of Chad, Howard or Christine. Never…?"
