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.

If nobody is ultimately a complete boor, Max Garrett (Alden Ehrenreich) seems to come remarkably close to one from the get-go. 

 “I don’t like this weepy-weepy wah-wah thing you do; I don’t respect it,” Max snaps at Suzanna Slater (Lauren Patten.)

“Max, I’m grieving,” replies Suzanna, whose father recently died.

Susan, Suzanna’s mother (Linda Emond), is even more harshly critical of her daughter’s mourning: ““You didn’t lose a child or even a breast. Your father died of natural causes after a life well-lived. That’s not loss. It’s transition.”” 

Suzanna, in turn, disapproves of her mother having taken up with a young con artist.

Max is a professional money manager, who in this first scene tells Suzanna and her mother that the deceased left a financial mess, and there is little money left. But we soon learn that their connections go far deeper.  Max was adopted into  Suzanna’s family when he lost his mother at age ten, so that the two of them have been as close as brother and sister for the past quarter century – close enough to snuggle up in bed together watching horror movies, which they did as children and continue as adults. By the end of the scene, we realize it’s even closer.

The next scene, however, is eight months later, and Suzanna is married to Andrew (Patrick Ball), whom she met on the skiing trip that Max insisted she go on to get over her wallowing.  The recent newlyweds have set Suzanna’s friend Max up on a date with Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), who works as a temp in Andrew’s office.  

What begins unpromisingly – Max takes one look at Becky’s dress and snarks “you look like a birthday cake” – turns cataclysmic, involving the police, and a hospital, with ramifications that affect every character. Max is furious with Suzanna for fixing him up “with a desperate woman… Romantic relationships are the pairing of equals! That woman is not my equal” Becky is upset enough that she begins to lean on Andrew. Suzanna is annoyed with Andrew for spending so much time with Becky.  Andrew says to Suzanna: “Jesus, I feel like I don’t know you.”  This comment could be the theme of “Becky Shaw,” as we see new sides to characters we thought we had pegged.

Brewer’s “desperate” Becky turns out to have a core of steel and calculation, ever so slightly suggesting a modern-day Becky Sharp, the heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair; Could it be that Ehrenreich’s Max is secretly vulnerable; were his lips quivering with emotion?   

And Susan, the harsh truth-teller, advises Becky “Learn to lie. 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.”  It’s a line that’s enough to make you gasp.

Becky Shaw
Second Stage’s Hayes Theater through June 14
Running time: Two hours and 20 minutes including a 15-minute intermission
Tickets: $94 – $277. Digital rush on Today Tix: $49
Written by Gina Gionfriddo
Directed by Trip Cullman
Scenic design by David Zinn, costume design by Kaye Voyce, lighting design by Stacey Derosier, sound design by M.L. Dogg
Cast: Patrick Ball as Andrew Porter, Madeline Brewer as Becky Shaw, Alden Ehrenreich as Max Garrett, Linda Emond as Susan Slater, Lauren Patten as Suzanna Slater