Neil LaBute is my favorite contemporary playwright. His style, his subjects, his view of the world all appeal to me for reasons I’ve yet to figure out for myself. While I wouldn’t give all his plays five stars, most of them deserve that much praise.

In a Forest, Dark and Deep, however, is not one of those. It’s the worst LaBute play I’ve ever read, with its lack of nuance and its overt narrative cliches reminding me of rookie scripts in a playwriting 101 course. Seriously, LaBute, you’re going to put in thunder and lightning to mirror the storm between the characters? That’s bush league.

The two-character play focuses on a brother-sister relationship. The brother, Bobby, comes to a cabin in the woods to help his sister, Betty, clear it out for some new tenets. Throughout the play, we learn more about Betty and the cabin and her real purpose for being there. But the story is so predictable, because in our crime drama-driven world, you’re able to pick up the clues if you have half a brain and give it a 10th of your attention.

And how does LaBute lead you to the conclusion? Through pages and pages of arguing and yelling. Now maybe this is the improv side of me coming out, but I’m tired of arguing in scenes. I’m tired of seeing it, hearing it and participating in it. It’s more fun to engage in conflict subtly. LaBute is great at that, or has been in the past. I don’t why or how he lost his cool in this play.

LaBute writes in the intro

We miss the missing. It’s a simple enough concept, I suppose–when someone has made an impact on our lives and then they’re gone, we long for them and what it was that made them special.

What makes LaBute special is his subtly, his finely tuned dialogue full of understated tension, the way he keeps you cringing but eager to continue watching disaster unfold. Let us hope soon it is that talented LaBute who returns from the missing.