Characters in 'This Is How It Goes' reveal their worst truths

By: SUSAN HAUBENSTOCK SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | Times-Dispatch
Published: October 31, 2009

Playwright Neil LaBute is known for exposing the bad behavior and bad motives that people like to hide. In plays such as "In the Company of Men" and "Fat Pig," his characters display the secret thoughts and cruelties that we suspect are lurking in the worst of us -- if not in all of us.

In "This Is How It Goes," the 2005 LaBute play now at Firehouse Theatre Project, there are breathtaking moments when the three main characters -- who are in an interracial love triangle -- reveal their racist, sexist, classist truths. Not breathtakingly beautiful, but breathtakingly ugly. And startlingly courageous in their way.

There is the sense that LaBute is experimenting here. The narrator, labeled only as Man, is a white ex-lawyer who's returned to his Midwest suburban hometown to see if he can start over as a playwright. He gets tied up with Belinda, a white woman he once dated, and her husband, Cody, who's a successful business owner and was a track star when the three of them were in high school together.

The Man lets us know up front that he may not be a reliable narrator, and in fact he offers different versions of "how it went" as he goes along. He shows us Belinda and Cody's problematic marriage and his own down-at-the-heels condition, then tries out some explanations. The language is highly charged -- taboo words and concepts are dropped like bombs, and the squirm factor is high.

Bill Patton's direction is both fearless and sensitive as he guides the cast through this minefield, and all three actors give brave, honest performances. Laine Satterfield's Belinda is touching when she's a victim and raw in her anger. Tyhm Kennedy fully embodies Cody's power and bravado. And Fred Iacovo, the Man, is impressive as he gives a deceptively relaxed and natural performance that opens up gradually to reveal how rotten the character might be.

Cheryl Williams' lighting and Lisa Lippman's costumes enhance the production, but the set by Edwin Slipek Jr. is disappointingly dull.

"The truth is so damn elusive," the Man tells us. Not everything in "This Is How It Goes" feels true, but it all feels dishearteningly possible.

Susan Haubenstock is a Henrico County-based freelance writer and editor. She can be contacted at shaubenstock@gmail.com.