Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...LaBute's plays have a lot of sting, and the Profiles cast (under the direction of Darrell W. Cox) has a swift way with the rhythms of the script. There is a real conversation between this play and the audience about the motivations behind certain behaviors."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...Under the well-orchestrated direction of Darrell W. Cox (with Thad Hallstein's carpet-tiled garage studio a little gem of set design), the perfectly cast actors keep you guessing every step of the way, and all the way out of the theater, too."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Darrell W. Cox, who performed in LaBute's Fat Pig, knows how important appearances are to the playwright and delivers Profiles Theatre's 90-minute midwest premiere with scary precision. Eric Burgher's manipulative white narrator-interloper, Lindsay Schmidt's oddly sympathetic mall-rat Desdemona, and Sean Nix's arrogant African-American overachiever create a soap opera that bursts all the bubbles."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...It's true that LaBute's dialogue sometimes seems more like a calculated attempt to jolt the audience into an I-can't-believe-they-just-said-that shock rather than an honest means to further the story. Moreover, LaBute is predictably formulaic with the piece's end-with-a-twist structure. That said, This is How it Goes remains engaging and provocative, with director Darrell Cox eliciting a trio of utterly believable performances from this three-person ensemble."
Chicago Free Press
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Darrell Cox is obviously attracted to LaBute’s controversial intelligence and renders a staging of accomplished detail. He wrings every bit of amusement and tension out of LaBute’s scenario. Cox is immeasurably aided by Thad Hallstein’s expansive, detailed set and by a committed ensemble."
Copley News Service
- Highly Recommended
"...Under Darrell Cox's sharp directing, the three-member ensemble delivers a performance oozing with intensity, ambiguity, and some humor. The Profiles has a knack for finding young actresses and casting them in roles that allow them to excel. In this show it's Lindsay Schmidt, a recent arrival from New York City and on the evidence of her performance as Belinda, a lady who will be an ornament on the area theater scene. Her naïve Belinda is a terrific mix of vulnerability, resentment, regret, and yearning, a woman who married for all the wrong reasons and now suffers the consequences."
Talkin Broadway
- Highly Recommended
"...Profiles' tiny storefront theater – with its seating capacity of 50 split into two sections on either side of the stage so that no one is very far from the performers – offers the opportunity for a nuanced and almost cinematic style of acting that is the company's trademark. Director Darrell W. Cox excels at that in his own work as an actor and gets the same sort of performances from his cast in this play."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...To say that the acting in a Profiles show is superior—some of the best in the city, Equity or non, this trio included—is like observing that the sky is blue. Yet the company’s slavish devotion to a capable but rarely relevant or nuanced writer sometimes saddles it with plays like this, which could be alternately titled You, Me and Debris."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...Le Bute weaves racial attitudes and interracial dynamics into a funny yet shocking drama that skillfully points out the underlying bigotry of many white Americans. LeBute takes no prisoners here. Eric Burgher is terrific as Man, the sophisticated liberal whose racial attitudes explode from his mouth. This could be Neil LeBute’s finest play to date."
