Last night’s opening of This is How it Goes was a rousing success. We had a good crowd for an opening Thursday night (especially with the cold and the rain), and the show was fantastic.
It’s such an interesting play, and the weighty subjects of racism, sexism, love, deception and human nature were discussed for almost an hour outside the theater one the 95-minute show concluded.
Neil LaBute is really unafraid to give his characters big, hairy warts. They’re not always wholly likable characters you’d want to make your best friend, or use as a pedestaled example of the height of humanity – but you cannot deny their genuineness. The misogynists of In the Company of Men, the manipulative know-it-all who uses sex as a weapon in The Shape of Things – we know these people. We’re friends with these people. We date these people. Some of us are these people.
I love hearing the gasps and “no-you-didn’t” sort of reactions in a show like this. I love hearing the loud, hard laughs followed shortly by the audible intakes of held breath and a lingering silence. I love the fact that it incites discussion and that people have such strong feelings about the material.
It’s also very refreshing to have so many new faces on our stage. Two of the three leads plus out waitress/asm in the show are new to Jobsite. Those two leads are new to the Tampa Bay stage in general. If you didn’t check out their profiles before, you can read David Dolphy’s here and Heather Scheffel’s here. Oh, and while I’m at it check out director Ami Corley’s here and set designer Brian Smallheer’s here. Oh yeah, and stage manager Erica Porch’s here.
As always, now it’s just a matter of hoping that the word spreads quickly enough and that people actually get out and see the show. If you’re on the fence, head on over here and read up on the show, watch the TV spot, check out those profiles above. If you still haven’t made it out to see All the Great Books (abridged), you could even make it a double feature. Both shows are short …
One Response
Another good show with good performances, particularly Ryan with his mountain of dialog to memorize.
This show embodies what I like most about Jobsite productions. There’s no way in heck I can make my father understand what they’re about when he calls and asks what I’ve seen. Too complex to describe and must be seen to be understood.
I could say “Well, it’s sort of a theatrical experiment where an unreliable narrator breaks the 4th wall repeatedly to redefine the truth of what we see and challenge our notions of truth in the real world as well as marital and race relations.” but that isn’t really going to explain it even though it’s reasonably accurate.
So go see it, there were empty seats that should have been filled.