ajhlovestheatre

BECKY SHAW

by Gina Gionfriddo

directed by Trip Cullman

Hayes Theater, New York City – until 14 June 2026

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://2st.com/shows/becky-shaw

Gina Gionfriddo’s 2008 Becky Shaw, only now receiving its Broadway bow in an exceptionally well cast production courtesy of Second Stage Theater, is a fascinating but frustrating play, one that considers interdependence and mutual responsibility in human relationships with a forensic precision, but is populated by a quintet of wildly unsympathetic characters. This new production by Trip Cullman doesn’t sugarcoat any of Gionfriddo’s cynical but acute observations and his magnificent cast make no attempt to endear their roles to us; the result is a bracing evening, often bitterly, even shockingly, funny, but an undeniably chilly one. It teases, worries and entertains, but never delves as deeply as it might.

The first scene takes place in a New York hotel room where self-centred post-graduate psychologist Suzanna Slater (Lauren Patten) is being comforted, or at least handled, after the death of her father by the acting family financial advisor Max (Alden Ehrenreich), who she grew up alongside when Pa Slater effectively adopted him as a child to get him away from his less than ideal parents. Not that Suzanna’s parents were any picnic either: Suzanna’s late dad may have been having a gay affair with his previous finance man, and mom Susan (Linda Emond) has descended on the city from her well-appointed Virginia home, like an acerbic, elegant Black Widow with toy boy lover in tow, much to Suzanna’s annoyance and disgust, and wielding her ongoing MS condition like it’s a weapon. Susan and Suzanna can’t even agree on how long Slater has been dead, and Max has a chronic if entertaining (for us) empathy problem, advising grieving Suzanna to enter the upcoming estate negotiations with “no crying. Big dick.”

It becomes swiftly apparent that there is more to Max and Suzanna’s relationship than meets the eye but fast forward eight months to Providence, Rhode Island and she has married aspiring writer Andrew (Patrick Ball), a slightly younger man with a penchant for ‘saving’ apparently fragile women then leaving them (“he hears ‘I want to hurt myself’ like a fucking mating call”). One such woman in crisis is the eponymous Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), a co-worker acquaintance of Andrew’s, and whom the newlyweds are planning on taking on a blind double date with Max. The implausibility of setting up anybody who doesn’t have the hide of a rhino with the emotionally savage Max needn’t be dwelt upon, but the stage is set for some serious fireworks.

Those fireworks don’t fully materialise, or at least not in the way one might have expected, and one of the interesting things about Gionfriddo’s tell-don’t-show script is how our expectations and assumptions about this flawed bunch are repeatedly confounded and shifted. It’s a static, talky piece but the complexities and casual cruelties in intimate relationships are put over with biting humour and some truly delicious writing.

It helps that the five performances are so on point. Screen star Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Brave New World) delivers a knockout Broadway debut, deservedly in the running for this year’s Tony award for Featured Actor in a Play (although arguably this is a leading role). More obviously traditional ‘alpha male’ perhaps than the late, great David Wilson Barnes who similarly slayed in this role in Peter DuBois’ original off-Broadway and 2016 London Almeida stagings, Ehrenreich nails Max’s unsettling sociopathic combination of charisma, self-interest and sheer bloody mindedness. Although Ball’s role isn’t as coruscatingly well written but he’s excellent. 

Patten’s tetchy chemistry with both her leading men is brilliantly done and her ability to make Suzanna relatable even at her most unpleasant is impressive. Brewer is wonderful as Becky, by turns sympathetic then infuriating, smug, unknowable and, possibly, extremely dangerous. The majestic Emond makes such a strong impression as poisonous, pragmatic, smart Suzan, the kind of woman who says things like “when someone with damage -as we have damage- courts a lover, we must be like the pedophile with the candy. Lure with candy no matter how frightful your nature and your intent” and whose view of humanity can be reduced to the observation “some people are retarded and they eat paint, others split atoms and write symphonies“. She’s an appalling human being but she’s such compelling theatrical company that you actively miss her when she’s not on stage.  

There are several different locales required by Gionfriddo’s script but David Zinn’s set unhelpfully and confusingly places almost everything in a black void resembling a corridor punctuated by doors. It’s pretty ugly to look at until the final scene when the play shifts to Susan’s house in Richmond, Virginia and the design suddenly and inexplicably opens out into something airy, opulent and naturalistic. Kaye Voyce’s costumes are spot on throughout. 

The laughs to gasps ratio in Becky Shaw is pretty equal, and the erudite, ferocious script is unlikely to ever again be cast as perfectly as it is here. It’s great that Gionfriddo’s work is finally on Broadway and here’s hoping that the critical and popular enthusiasm for this one prompts further reappraisals of her body of work, but perhaps especially her 2012 Rapture Blister Burn which is, arguably, a more engaging and colourful piece than this one. Still, if it’s provocation and faultless acting you’re after, it’s right here.