Review Roundup: IN A FOREST DARK AND DEEP

LOST star Matthew Fox and THE GHOST WRITER's Olivia Williams star in the world premiere production of Neil LaBute's IN A FOREST, DARK AND DEEP. LaBute directs the production, which began previews at the West End Vaudeville theater on March 3, 2011 and opens on March 14, 2011. The show will play 12 weeks.

On a dark and stormy night, all Bobby thought he was doing was helping his sister Betty clear out her cottage in the forest. But in this cabin of lies nothing is as it seems and the truth refuses to be packed away. What is she hiding? Does he really want to find out? This is a dark comedy of sibling rivalry that escalates into a psychological thriller bursting with savage conflict.

Michael Billington, Guardian: In this highly entertaining, 100-minute two-hander Neil LaBute pulls the rug from under our feet so often that we end up feeling breathless. What LaBute is writing about is the elusiveness of truth and the deceptiveness of appearances. Bobby, for all his sexism and racism, turns out to be a fierce puritan. Betty, on the other hand, is an instinctive liar. But, while it's good to have our assumptions overturned, I am always a little suspicious of plays where it's dangerous to reveal too much of the plot. Great drama does not depend heavily on narrative suspense.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: The play is heavier on plot than LaBute's previous work - at times resembling a twisted cousin of Ira Levin's ingenious Deathtrap - and there's some stinging dialogue, especially when Bobby expounds his sense of morality. But as a portrait of psychological warfare it's undernourished, and even when it's dark it isn't deep. 

Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph:  It's sad to see two fine actors - the American Matthew Fox... and our own, usually superb Olivia Williams, squandered in such tosh. Fox has his moments as the apparently crude and despicable brother who actually has a strong sense of morality, but Williams seems far too wholesome to persuade us that she is a promiscuous femme fatale who is also something worse. The only real mystery about this dire psychological thriller is why anyone thought it was worth staging in the West End in the first place.

Michael Coveney, Whatsonstage: LaBute skilfully weaves his way through his own arbitrary revelations ... I've always liked the way LaBute messes with PC tolerance, but it's quite an easy trope if you're looking for controversy in the theatre. We may be coming through a post-Clybourne Park era where this kind of writing doesn't look quite as daring as it once did. But it's good to have LaBute back in the West End, mixing it all up a bit.

Paul Taylor, Independent: And yet, as Fox's subtly shaded performance indicates, there is a sense in which the brother's near-misogynist resentment at Betty's sexual history is a token of his loving (albeit semi-incestuous) concern for her. Olivia Williams has the more difficult task as the initially mettlesome and increasingly distraught sister.

Libby Purves, The Times: For the first ten minutes, watching the bickering and occasional disco-dancing of Olivia Williams and Matthew Fox - star of Lost - in a forest cabin set, I felt as if I would rather watch a pair of hissing cockroaches. But the clever rhythm and emotional tempo increased, propelled with The Players' brilliance and fluency.

 

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