Becky Shaw Broadway Review
9 / 10
The audience gasped almost as frequently as it laughed during the performance I attended of “Becky Shaw,” Gina Gionfriddo’s fierce, funny comedy that revolves around a bad blind date. What audibly startled the audience wasn’t what happens to the characters, which is one disaster after another, all skillfully plotted, but what some of the characters say to one another. In the play’s complicated web of relationships, these characters feel free to deliver what they consider the truth, but what they say often sounds more like insult than insight. That theatergoers are unlikely to wind up dismissing any of these blunt-speaking characters as complete boors is a testament to the playwright’s rich, nuanced writing, and the layered portrayals by the stellar five-member cast, three of whom are making impressive Broadway debuts. “Becky Shaw” is opening tonight at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Broadway, one block north and seventeen years after Second Stage’s Off-Broadway production of the play, which has not lost its sting.
