This Is How It Goes

Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black – rich, black, and different, in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, THIS IS HOW IT GOES unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.

Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard – since Edward Albee, actually – to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power. –Donald Lyons, New York Post

LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country’s sin-sick souls. –John Istel, American Theatre