Onstage: Review: This Is How It Goes

Ovation stages a Neil LaBute play that keeps you guessing

Apr 11, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Mark Byron


(L-R) Michael Monks, Jeff Carpenter and Jennifer Owen star in Ovation Theatre's This Is How It Goes.



The narrator of Ovation Theatre Company's current production, Neil LaBute's This Is How It Goes, is very upfront. In the opening minutes, he nervously confesses, "I may end up being an unreliable narrator."

That's a warning audiences should heed in watching this talkative young man (Michael Monks) who frames, comments on and participates in a story about high school acquaintances reconnecting after a dozen years.

Belinda Phipps (Jennifer Owen) was a cheerleader back then; Cody Phipps (Jeff Carpenter) was a standout athlete. In "a smallish town in the Midwest" they turned a lot of heads when they began dating and even more when they married