Paulanne Simmons
When Becky Beckons "Becky Shaw"
Gina Gionfriddo’s "Becky Shaw," now a Second Stage revival directed by Trip Cullman, may be a play about relationships, but it’s hard to take the way the people it portrays interact with each other seriously. Most of us speak without censors occasionally, but not all the time. We are sometimes oblivious to how our words will affect others, but not without fail. We occasionally manipulate, but this is not our way of life. In Becky Shaw the most uninhibited character is the newly widowed Susan Slater (Linda Edmond, dominating the stage the way her character dominates her home) who has fallen desperately in love with the house painter and doesn’t care who knows it. She is the mother of Suzanna (Lauren Patten), a graduate student in psychology, and stepmother to Max Garren (Alden Ehrenreich), whom the family adopted when his mother died and his father didn’t want him. Max is a capable money manager and he is trying, with no help from Susan, to set the family’s crumbling finances on a better foundation. When he suggests they talk about pressing issues, Susan suggests they go out to eat, and she never talks business over a meal. Max is an honest straight shooter. He is not good with relationships. But in many ways, he is the only one in this play who truly cares.
Max and Suzanna have grown up as brother and sister, but their feelings for each other are anything but filial. Their bantering and often funny dialogue barely cover the smoldering volcano that only erupts once. Suzanna finds that one time so disorienting she marries the first man who comes along, Andrew Porter (Patrick Ball), a wannabe writer and do-gooder trying to save the world, particularly troubled women. Enter Becky Shaw (the wonderful Madeline Brewer and a principal highlight of the play). Andrew and Suzanna set Max and Becky up on a blind date that ends disastrously when they are held up at gunpoint. Max wants to forget all about it. Becky seizes the unfortunate incident as a way of worming her way into Max’s life and enlisting Andrew’s help. Becky makes herself seductive, vulnerable and victimized. She is as phony as a two-dollar bill, something everyone but Andrew sees. There are various twists and turns in the plot, but in the end, although couples leave together and stand together, it’s hard to picture anyone staying together but Suzanna and the house painter. And some people in the audience may wonder what and why they have been watching.
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