Getting weary of the old familiar review format of "this was good, that wasn't," I decided to chuck the usual way of writing up a review of a great play and just talk to the people involved.
This is a letter to all the people we loved in 2nd Story's Becky Shaw, by Brown University grad Gina Gionfriddo.
Speaking of whom, let's start with her.
Gina: Clearly your professional combination of a Brown University education, a Providence and Rhode Island familiarization, writing for TV (namely Law & Order) and your second-nature sense of humor, irony and absurdity, not to mention killer one-liners, make you a great playwright. You can speak "Rhode-Islandah," and also churn out smart observations about the ordinary strangeness of families and relationships and those two qualities I never expected to find in one play simultaneously. You deserve to be a household name around here and I hope 2nd Story taking notice of you will help make you one.
You have that special talent of being very clever but you don't let your wit run away into obscure preciousness: the humor always hits the mark of intuitive truth. No wonder why you almost won the Pulitzer Prize for this in 2009.
The play felt like play-TV script combo because it had that addictive, page-turning quality to it, not a conventional play that has formal official beginnings and endings. When the ending finally did come, we did not see it coming and we were ready for more, lots more.
I'm not even sure what I would call Becky Shaw: a "comedy psychodrama"? Maybe it deserves its own sub-genre, not that we need any more of those.
Ara Boghigian/Max: We thought we knew you, but you showed us - we sure didn't!
We pegged you, wrongly, as it turned out, as an amateur handler of emotions after we saw you unsuccessfully attempt Stanley Kowalski a couple of winters ago in A Streetcar Named Desire. But how unfair were we, because after all, who in the right mind would want to try to be Brando: Part II?
Finally, you get to be your own brand of masculine man, now that we're we see you contemporary, local, and effortlessly funny, in a play where your urban sensibilities, accent and confident swagger get the workout they deserve. Bravo!
We were hoping for you to be not bad. Well, not only were you great, but you were the star of the show! You were funny, likeably arrogant, fast on your feet, and rightly fed up with the other characters who kept falling back on you to fix all their problems.
The funny part and the tragic part of the play is that though you're the decisive and self-assured one, you don't get to be with Susanna, even though sparks fly all over the place any time you guys start a fight or so much as look at each other. That's how I felt about you guys, anyway.
Suzanna/Rachel Morris: We loved you even though you are absolutely hopeless at life. You are self-pitying, unrealized and unfocused, looking to either your husband Andrew, Max, to rescue you from yourself, but for some reason that didn't make you annoying, probably because you kept questioning everything and everyone and never stopped trying to get it: who you are and what the heck it is that you want from everybody. You could have easily become maudlin or tiresome in your grief: your grief for your dad, your grief for your screwed-up mom and her worthless boyfriend, for your awkward marriage and for your love and loyalty to Max, which you didn't know what to do with, because you needed him so much all the while you kept wondering if you truly could get by without him. We aren't sure you will, but the play ends making us wonder.
Becky Shaw/Hillary Parker: You really were terrific at playing the subtlety crazy chick. I don't think I've ever seen nutty played with such complexity before. When you could have settled for awkward, weird, or edgy, you figured out how to be disarmingly, surprisingly messed up. And even when you are clearly taking advantage of people and grabbing on to them in whatever way you can, you're always vulnerably human: you may be more passive aggressive than Suzanna, but like her, you share fear and desperation.
Director Ed Shea: We love that you always get the best plays under your belt before the other theaters in the state begin to figure out what they just missed. We love that you're doing comedies all year long, but not just mindless, formulaic over-famous comedies, no: you pick some classic, or some that should be but aren't yet classic, comedies. We love that while the other theaters, like maiden aunts, are taking us back to the school room and forcing us to once again re-appreciate with the same wholesome healthy classics like A Doll's House, or The Crucible, meanwhile, over in quiet quaint little Warren, RI, you again and again turn out something that we weren't expecting, that keeps us guessing, and that keeps us curious, animated and wanting more! If you'll pardon extending the bad analogy, while the Gamm or Trinity keeps throwing us overcooked vegetables until we can't take it any more, you always have something fresh, seasonal, organic, often local and if not, then deliciously diverse and unusual.
And don't want to forget to mention that the two new screens you put up during School for Wives is such a nice natural addition, by the way, bringing in a useful but not overbearing visual accompaniment that not only keeps the time but keeps the show moving forward.
The set for 2nd story's production of 'Becky Shaw' comprises four pieces of furniture: two massive ivory micro suede chairs and their matching footrests. They're blocky, mundane and unmistakably American, and in a sane universe there would be no need to comment on them at all. But in director Ed Shea's universe, and in the world he's built around Gina Gionfriddo's crazy, funny, dark comedy, these suburban artifacts somehow emerge as numinous. Dont ask how it happens; it just does. In the dimmed lighting between scenes, stagehands glide the four pieces into new configurations, creating a hotel room, a studio apartment, a café, an upper-crust Virginia home. These interludes occur frequently and are so well choreographed that they can be a bit distracting. But Shea's balletic scene-changes also mirror, in an odd way, a question that sits at the heart of this play in which old loves, cherished fictions and bitterly defended philosophies are the heavy stuff that people just keep shuffling around in their lives. Scenes and conversations may shift, but subtexts - old loves, old narratives, old unfinished business threaten to remain the same forever. The question is: what would it take to force a change? And, what would it look like to stop all the shuffling and introduce something new to the setting?
At 2nd Story, it looks like a six-foot Venus in a sequined party dress. Or, rather than Venus, let's say Pandora. Hillary Parker plays Becky Shaw, the blind date from hell who unleashes the forces of chaos necessary to push the play's main characters, Max and Suzanna, out of their long-term sexual dither. When the play begins, we find the two in a hotel room together in the hours after a memorial service for Suzanna's father. They seem quite a complementary pair. Suzanna is a rich, sheltered Daddy's girl, and Max is a high-powered money manager with a brutal wit and a cash flow capable of keeping Suzanna in good clothes. But there's more to these two characters than just grab and flash. Rachel Morris shows us that the death of Suzanna's father has left her genuinely lost, not just whiny, and Ara Boghigian layers tenderness in with Max's exasperated efforts to convince her to get on with her life.
Together, Morris and Boghigian provide us with satisfying glimpses into the depths of the couple's shared history and affection, but here's the thing: they aren't a couple. Max is technically Suzanna's brother, having been adopted by her parents when the two were kids. This fact both tethers the characters and holds them apart, and their perpetual, irresolvable orbiting of one another is what creates the plays binding tension. In terms of confusions and taboos, it could be the material of a Shakespeare play.
Max and Suzanna do consummate their long-deferred attraction, but the next time we see them together (some months later, in a scene set in Providence) Suzanna has married Andy (Tim White) a feckless, penniless scribbler from Brown whom she appears to have chosen on the basis of his complete lack of resemblance to Max and the newlyweds have invited Max to their apartment to meet Becky. Suzanna has moved on, apparently, and is sparing no pain in proving it. But the ditzy, girlish, damaged Becky is obviously a god-awful match for Max, and Andy is such a lightweight that we keep looking for the moment when, as in that aforementioned Shakespeare comedy, the right pair of lovers will finally be reunited.
Shea plays on our expectations, keeping us guessing as Suzanna struggles to keep her marriage, and Max confidently prowls its perimeters. Under his direction, Andy and Becky, who begin as broad character types, bloom bit by bit into dimension. Parker, in particular, makes an impression here. Rather than playing her for laughs, she takes Becky seriously, employing an understated approach that focuses on her suppressed inner resources rather than her quirky clothes and manner of speech. This makes Becky truly alarming when she ascends into mania, and even more unsettling when, at the end, she regains a composure that seems to cow even the dauntless Max. Parker's measured performance makes us take Becky seriously too, and the production as a whole is both funnier and darker for her contribution.
Lastly, Paula Faber gives a bracing performance as Suzanna's mother - a woman whose struggle with MS has sharpened her frank intensity to the point of scariness without making her heroic. The role is small, but Faber gives Susan stunning depth. Yes, Susan is sick. Yes, she's getting worse. But, she is sure as hell not going gentle into that good night, and she's not letting anyone else off easy, either. Susan faces her illness, her financial ruin, the revelation of her late husband's homosexuality and her lover's crimes with the frozen wrath of a cobra confronted by a garden hose. Each of these affronts to her dignity, we sense, is just a shadow of the larger enemy: her real rival is life itself in all its cruel perversity. It's not until the last moments of the play, shortly before the lights go down, that we begin to see the danger into which Max, as her protégé, is walking.
"There she is..." as they like to say at the Miss America shindig.
Ahh, but we are not at a pageant here. No, in "Becky Shaw," 2nd Story Theatre's absolutely hilarious, absolutely tough-minded Providence-based comedy, we are in an East Side apartment and Becky has just arrived for the date from hell. She toddles in on high heels that push her well over six feet, her hosiery is all black with wiggly lines. And her mini-dress? Well, that gleams in green, where it's not peek-a-boo that is.
Overdone? Oh yeah.
But accurate and telling? Oh, yes.
Written by Brown University graduate Gina Gionfriddo, "Becky Shaw" is a scathing, insightful comedy that will have you both roaring with laughter and make you wonder just who the heck are these people, anyway? The play, and the production, are as funny and incisive as anything seen around here in years.
What's it all about, though? you say? I was afraid you'd ask.
Becky has arrived for a blind date with Max. He's a super-charged cut-to-the-chase financial guy. Do it, make money, move on is his m.o. Becky? Well, Becky, like Max, is in her mid-30s, just without his drive or accomplishments. Life has been mean to her, but she's still trying.
Add in two other early to mid-30s folks. Andrew, is a co-dependant, do-gooder, Susan, a mixed up grad student. Susan's Mom suffers from MS. But she does have her never-seen, but always thought-of, "rent-boy," Lester.
Playwright Gionfriddo is going for showing us a glimpse of how messed up, how exciting, how oh-so-very real life in the 21st century can be. All of these folks have the ability to do well and be kind. But they also can truly mess up and be as nasty as any character in a 19th century novel. (Which, by the way, is inferred by this play, reaching back as it does, to Thackeray's "Becky Sharp.")
But Gionfriddo, keeps the play very much in the Now. She tweaks not only Providence but a Rhode Island accent (in a boisterous "bubbulah" (as in water fountain) scene and then nicely zings Brown University, too.
All of the writing is blisteringly clever. "Marriage," says Max, "is just like prostitution: Both sides want something." Is someone in therapy? "That's not action," he says, "that's wallowing."
After a while, you do wonder when the laughs will quit and will you ever become involved with these people, much less like them.
That you do is a credit to director Ed Shea. This 2nd Story production never falters. Max is done to a warp-speed turn by Ara Boghigan. Rachel Morris, and Tim White are spot-on as folks coping as best they can with a family most real, most heartbreaking.
Hillary Parker takes Becky from fumbling sweetheart to scheming witch. And Paula Faber as the Mom with MS, and the rent boy, is convincing when she says, "Maybe that's how life works, you know? All these hideous things, but you get little pockets of joy to get you through."
In the end, "Becky Shaw" is a play you'll talk about all the way home, and after. You'll chuckle over its rapier-sharp humor, and then wonder about its insidious view of the world we inhabit, one way or another.
It is an enduring mystery to me that 2nd Story Theatre in Warren, surely the hippest theater in the state and probably a few surrounding ones, too, is not packed with Providence hipsters on any given night.
True, it was packed this past Saturday, as the audience gasped, cringed and laughed through a performance of Becky Shaw, the deliciously explosive comedy of modern bad manners from sometime-local playwright Gina Gionfriddo (also a former writer/producer for Law & Order). But as usual, my companion and I were some of the youngest people there - and we're both pushing 40.
Mysterious, given the play's razor-sharp dialogue, casual sex and tattooed main character - not to mention its thought-provoking exploration of relationships and horror-movie moments of psychological suspense. There's even Providence provenance: Much of the play is set in the Ocean State capital, where Gionfriddo went to grad school at Brown before teaching writing at Brown, PC and RIC. That means jokes about Portuguese cooking, Brown's admittance policies and Edgewood's waterside homes, plus a mugging that sparks the inevitable exchange about whether the West Side is a bad area. Throughout it all, Gionfriddo's biting wit reigns, leaving the audience covetously straining to catch every zinger. I, for one, left with the slightly smug feeling that lots of smart people are, indeed, attracted to these parts. Gionfriddo being one of the foremost.
Director and artistic director Ed Shea is another smart one, of course, and he's come up with the usual spare but thoughtful set and small, well cast group of actors. Simple pieces of modern furniture are arranged to suggest a hotel room, an apartment, a coffee shop. The mellow, atmospheric strains of Everything But The Girl set the opening mood (and are played during scene changes throughout, providing a moment of contemplation to recover from the all-out assault of the action).
We meet Suzanna, who a few months after her father's death is still depressed and in mourning. She is arguing with her mother over her mom's new lover, and taking comfort and advice from someone called Max, and we can't quite figure out who he is; he's like a brother, and yet - is that sexual tension?
Sure it is, in the bracingly amoral prelude to the central plot line, which begins one scene later - which is when Suzanna and her new husband Andrew set up a couple of friends on a blind date. The date is the catalyst for a chain of events that almost rip apart a marriage and reveal surprising sides to every character - no one is the person they at first appear, and all are deeply flawed. They're all familiar, too - as familiar as your Providence friends - and despite all the manipulation and cynicism, there's real wisdom and even romance here, too.
Most of the actors are young, and most are 2nd Story protegees with only a play or two under their belts. In a theater scene in which we're used to seeing the same veteran actors again and again, 2nd Story's rotating stable of unknowns is a refreshing if risky strategy. It works because of Shea's casting and directing skills - he has a gift for pulling remarkable performances out of actors, and this production is a fine example.
Rachel Morris completely inhabits the part of unpleasant psychologist Suzanna. Tim White, with his hipster haircut and tats, is quietly effective as unemployed writer and emotional patsy Andrew. Paula Faber dispenses tough truths as only a mother can in the part of Susan - she's dead-pan and devastating. Hillary Parker manages a veneer of ditziness over a backbone of chilling resolve as the titular character, Becky. And then there's Ara Boghigian, who is a force of nature as arrogant finance guy Max. Boghigian IS Max, in a performance that's unwaveringly unlikeable and yet completely compelling. When we realize, in the last moments of the play, that he may actually have met his match, it's a triumph both of the head and the heart.
In fact, that pretty much describes an evening at 2nd Story these days - it's the best theater in the metro area, and this production once more proves the point. Smart people looking for clever fun will be rushing to Warren through February 20 to fortify themselves with a drink in the playhouse's gorgeous curved wooden bar, before heading upstairs to get run over by Becky Shaw.
Who is Becky Shaw? She's the title character of a play, and while you may hope never to meet a real Becky, "Becky Shaw," the play, is a treasure.
Written by Gina Gionfriddo, a graduate of the master's degree playwriting program at Brown University, the play was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize - and it is set in Providence.
There's even a joke about the Roe-Dieland accent, which tells you this is a funny play, but it has a dark side, which often is uncomfortably - yet hilariously - funny.
The scintillating production currently at 2nd Story Theatre makes the most of both the dark and the light, and long after you've left the theater, you'll still be talking about "Becky Shaw," and Becky Shaw.
Interestingly, it takes a while for the title character to appear. We're first introduced to the triumvirate of Susan, her daughter Suzanna and adopted son, Max, and their disparate ways of coping with a life-altering event: the death of Suzanna's father.
As emotional as inward-looking as Suzanna is - she is, after all, studying for a doctorate in psychology - Max is pragmatic. He's a professional financial advisor, and it has fallen to him to take care of the women and what's left of the family's money.
Susan, meanwhile, is framing her husband's death in terms of her own needs; she has multiple sclerosis and needs someone to help her.
Along the way, we see that the family characteristic they all share is an acid tongue, and clearly, there is more than brother-sister feeling between Max and Suzanna. But then we fast-forward about year and find Suzanna has married, Susan has a questionable boyfriend, and Max is still single, cynical and, actually, content with all that.
However, Suzanna and her new husband, Andrew, have arranged a blind date for Max with a temp at Andrew's office named Becky Shaw. Andrew knows Becky is a needy soul, but she arrives under prepared - and comically over dressed - for the situation, and the date goes awry in ways that affect events for the rest of the play.
Experiencing the unexpected directions the story takes is the pleasure in seeing something new, but suffice it to say, neither the playwright nor director Ed Shea wastes a moment or a personality quirk in directing your attention.
For her part, Gionfriddo shows a sharp eye for human nature, distilled as it may be in these characters. Just for example, as much as Suzanna, the 30-something psych major, values total honesty in her marriage, the older Susan says too much of that good thing is a recipe for disaster, that marriages are allowed "pockets of mystery."
Who is right? Your opinions about their opinions - and about the characters themselves - shift continuously as the play develops. Are Suzanna's views just psycho-babble? Is Susan too pragmatic? Is Max dependable or controlling?
Gionfriddo gives us lots to talk about, and we haven't even mentioned Becky yet. She's 35 years old, without a real job or money, and describes herself as feeling like a leaf blown around by the wind.
But she has a lot of tools in her bag of personality disorders, and she's not so fragile that she won't use them in pursuit of what she wants.
Tall, blonde and sweet-faced Hillary Parker looks the part of Becky Shaw, but she also can switch with scary speed between victim and whatever else Becky is, possibly con artist.
As the acerbic Susan, Paula Faber arches her eyebrows and tosses off stinging observations with perfect timing, while Tim White is spot on as the earnestly sensitive but feckless Andrew.
While the play is titled "Becky Shaw," it's about Suzanna and Max, and Rachel Morris and Ara Boghigian are flawless. They're like magnets, attracted to one another in one alignment, repelling each other when realigned, and believable in every interaction.
It's a visual of the self-confident Max reduced to hair-pulling frustration in the face of Becky's persistence that is one of the most memorable in the show.
Creating that image for the audience is an example of how Shea, the director, works as a visual artist as well as story-teller in his directing.
Even the minimalist set, just four pieces of a sectional sofa that are rearranged between scenes, reflects his vision: our shifting feelings about the characters are reflected in the constantly rearranged furniture.
"Becky Shaw" is fresh, contemporary, funny, and will provoke lots of discussion. Don't miss it.
Gina Gionfriddo's 2008 play "Becky Shaw" is an acerbic comedy that leaves you laughing all the way to the metaphorical riverbank where the probability of jumping in is 50-50; under Ed Shea's disciplined hand, Gionfriddo's take on contemporary relationships is a take-no-pris-oners assault on the relationship merry-go-round and the holy state of matrimony or the unholy state of "matrimoney" (a marriage based solely on economic necessity). A cynical self-interest dominates the psyche of each of the playwright's thoroughly contemptible yet altogether likable characters. Their gutter vocabulary could well have been hijacked from some of David Mamet's finest and foulest creations, but their angst is heartfelt, even if frequently misplaced. Everyone in the play is suffering, but not insufferable - pretty good trick for a playwright to carry off. Brown University play-writing MFA grad Gionfriddo manages because she has an enormous gift for storytelling and a knack for writing fresh, crisp dialogue that makes you think her characters are a lot smarter than they actually are.
Max (Ara Boghigian) makes a living handling other peo-ple's money - sound familiar? He's the quasi-brother of Suzanna (Rachel Morris) and the sort-of son of Susan (Paula Faber), Suzanna's mother. Suzanna is grieving the loss of dear old dad a few months earlier; not so for Mom, who has taken up with Lester, some cracker from the middle South, and is thoroughly lost in lust. She and Lester are going through what's left of a meager family "fortune" way too fast, so Susan and Max are there to "help," not themselves in this case.
In the shear lack of joy in the moment, Suzanna and Max do something they have avoided doing for many, many, too many years and have sex.
Then Max sends Suzanna off to New England on a ski trip to mend her mangled mind and loose limbs while he settles in Boston temporarily to open a branch office of his financial firm.
While on the slopes, Suzanna falls madly in love with Andrew (Tim White) and inexplicably marries him on a quick trip to Vegas, breaking the code of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." She brings Andrew home to Providence much to the dismay of "brother" Max. Probably to soothe their collective conscience and get Max out of their hair, Suzanna and Andrew fix up Andrew with a young Brown dropout, Becky Shaw (Hillary Parker), who works in Andrew's office.
I'd like to tell you about Becky Shaw, but I don't dare outside of the fact that she is one of the most intriguing and disturbing characters to grace the American stage in quite some time. And Parker's portrayal of Becky is nothing short of spectacular. One moment she is completely vulnerable, the next, vindictive and vengeful. She is saucy and sad, sexy and self-deprecating - all the things that drive a mad Max madder. He wants her out of his life! Or does he? Faber, Morris, Boghigian and White all perform flawlessly. The delivery of Gionfriddo's lines and interpretation of the playwright's characters by this wonderful cast make for an exhilarating evening of theater. This may very well be the best show in town.
Dave Christner is a South County playwright. His "Red Hot Mamas" premiered in Mumbai, India, in January and is being produced in Arizona, Detroit and Mexico this month.
It's fascinating to watch what people put themselves through to insulate themselves from what they put themselves through through other people. Got that? Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw is a sadly hilarious examination of one neurotic case that makes the syndrome a little clearer and a lot funnier than it is in the abstract. A fine 2nd Story Theatre rendition, directed by Ed Shea, is on the boards through February 6.
We get a glimmer of what's in store at the opening, when Max (Ara Boghigian) asks Suzanna (Rachel Morris) which of the Nightmare on Elm Street series has come up in her hotel channel surfing. Not only does she instantly know it's 3, but she pipes up with Freddy's next line. This apparently is a modern young woman accustomed to coping with the grim reality of life by acclimatizing herself to its extremes. Her father has just died and she doesn't want to see her mother Susan (Paula Faber), as psychologically fraught a prospect as Freddy. (The mother is here mainly as a bad example of womanhood, stuck on a victimizing boyfriend. She maintains that careful duplicity is the secret of a satisfying relationship.)
Max isn't Suzanna's boyfriend, he is virtually her brother, taken in by her father as a boy. Of course, since this is a romantic comedy, there is enough sexual tension in the situation to lead to more than brotherly advice.
Flash forward a year, to an apartment in Providence, and Suzanna is married to Andrew (Tim White), an unpublished writer but a patient mate. He's used to her displacing unresolved daddy issues onto him, despite her working on a graduate degree in psychology. Max doesn't take him seriously. (Pornography makes Andrew cry, which leaves Max dumbstruck.)
The playwright has fun with such references to Brown, where she learned her craft. When Suzanna mentions that there is a student drive to send books to Iraq, Max points out that the last thing IED-avoiding soldiers want is "a fucking underlined copy of To the Lighthouse."
Despite the title, this is largely, perhaps predominantly, Max's play, both because of Gionfriddo's fascination with the complex character and Boghigian's compelling, thoroughly internalized understanding of such a man, veering him away from blatant arrogance. Max makes good money as a financial advisor, and he gives a full 10 percent of his income to social concerns he can't personally do anything about and wants to relegate to the periphery of his attention. It's not that he's insensitive, he's efficient, fine-tuned to be just sensitive enough.
That's where Becky (Hillary Parker) comes in, a blind date set up for Max by Suzanna and Andrew. She might very well have blinded him with the hooker garb she shows up in, a bit of costume miscasting that makes her seem stupid rather than just overdressed. It's not that she's not smart (a Brown dropout), she's just incessantly unsure of herself, the polar opposite of Max. When they are mugged on their first date, he brushes off the incident and doesn't even admit he was terrified - or even, more importantly, that there was an uncomfortable psychological residue. He can't even accept that it was required, to retain his decent-person membership card, to return Becky's calls for comfort after the incident.
Parker is delightful as Becky, whether she is picking apart Max's reactions or the relationship between them that he is out of breath running away from. She has a bravura, go-girl scene, which earned audience applause afterwards, fulminating about men, like Max and otherwise, who have given her a hard time.
As for Providence being the setting, along with Manhattan, it mainly serves for ridiculous comparison. Brown is made gentle fun of, but four disparaging references to Portuguese in about 10 minutes include three about frying fish. That's much more annoying than the playwright not knowing what the Vietnam War term "short-timer" means.
Beautifully acted and directed, this production of Pulitzer finalist Becky Shaw develops more than the familiar study of emotionally distant man and emotionally needy woman we often see on stage. We get to see a stereotype resolve into an archetype.
Becky Shaw is a petty spacey lady, an irritating airhead, who tends to overdress. And she's a disaster waiting to happen. Just ask Max, the financial planner, who was stuck on a disastrous blind date with her.
The fallout from that night turns out to be the makings of the latest offering from Warren's 2nd Story Theatre, a wickedly funny play called "Becky Shaw" by Gina Gionfriddo, who went to graduate school at Brown and spent about a decade kicking around Providence doing dead-end jobs, while working on her writing.
So it's no surprise to find this, her most popular play, set in Providence, with some good-natured fun poking at Brown, and a reference to a mugging outside the Decatur Lounge.
But "Becky Shaw" is, for the most part, a study in kooky characters. It's clever, with sharp-witted dialogue, and some very funny moments.
And the cast is first-rate, especially Ara Boghigian as cool, hard-hearted Max, a man who likes to love 'em and leave 'em. Boghigian, who has clearly grown as an actor since the last time I saw him at 2nd Story, could not have been more convincing, could not have been a bigger cad. It was a completely believable portrait of a man who sees the world in terms of dollar signs.
Actually, Boghigian and Rachel Morris, as Suzanna, are sort of the central figures in the play. Max was taken in by Suzanna's parents, after his mother died and his father left. They are like brother and sister, except for the fact that they once slept together. We see them sucking face in the opening act, just months after the death of Suzanna's father.
Fast forward eight months, and we find Suzanna married to Andrew, who used to work in the Coffee Collective and now has an office manager's job that he hates. Suzanna and Andrew decide it would be nice to fix Max up with Suzanna's friend, Becky Shaw.
Their first meeting was kind of awkward, and things only went down hill from there. Becky wants to talk about it afterwards, after Max has slept with her. But he is over the whole thing, and just wants to move on. But Becky, played by a ditzy Hillary Parker, has other plans.
Gionfriddo has given us a wonderfully complex and conflicted character in Becky, who seems completely out of it, except for the occasional pithy insight. Becky shows up for her date with Max in mesh stockings and a shiny outfit that looks like a French dessert. She is at times self-effacing and demure, but can snarl and threaten, too. And Parker captures it all.
The other cast member who surprised me was Paula Faber as Susan, Suzanna's tough-as-nails mom. This was a performance with an attitude, as solid a portrayal as I've seen Faber give.
Tim White does a decent job as Suzanna's husband Andrew.
As is the custom at 2nd Story, the play is done in the round with minimal sets, just four bits of modular furniture that are constantly reconfigured into a hotel bed, couch and chairs.
"Becky Shaw," directed by Ed Shea, is a smart, zany concoction that's sure to make you laugh. It's a little slow out of the blocks, perhaps, but it's a play that rings true.
Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw has been called a "comedy of bad manners."
The plot involves the devastating effects of a bad first date. There will be a visit to the police station, bad sex, manipulation, threats of blackmail, a suicide attempt, and the marriage of the couple who set Becky and Max up may be collateral damage before the night's over.
And, by the way, Becky Shaw isn't just another dark comedy, its rapier wit will cut you to pieces.
The commissioned play opened to critical acclaim in 2008 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and its 2009 stint at NYC's Second Stage Theatre garnered gushing reviews, including one in the NY Times.
Now, Becky returns home, in a sense, as 2nd Story Theatre opens the production Jan 21.
Gionfriddo spent 10 years in Providence studying with Paula Vogel at Brown U, teaching at RIC and PC, living the slack college life of a 20-something and sharpening her skills as a formidable playwright.
Artistic director Ed Shea was quick, and wise, to program Becky Shaw, a profound, contemporary work with 5 of its 9 scenes set in Rhode Island.
"It's a vivid and insightful study of what it means to be in a 21st century 'relationship,'" Shea says. "In addition to all that, I find the play's ever-present focus on the psychology of its characters to be in keeping with my own belief that great drama is a psychological journey...one that, as Hamlet says in his advice to the players, exists to hold 'a mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.' Gina Gionfriddo holds the mirror up to our natures relentlessly and unflinchingly, but always with an abundance of humor, witty reparte and love. It also lends itself well to 2nd Story's minimalist, essentialist aesthetic."
The characters of Becky Shaw have been cited as complex and their relationships, compromisingly limited.
"I'm not sure I believe there are any romantic perfect fits," Gionfriddo says. "I think all relationships are a negotiation, and I tend to think who we love is determined from childhood. Susan says in the play, 'the heart wants what the heart wants.' I think these characters' desires are really tangled up in childhood wounds."
Gionfriddo points out that her work has been labeled a "comedy of bad manners" because the characters can be more raw and forthright than expected.
"I guess Max's behavior could be construed as bad manners at times," Gionfriddo says. "I think the play has been called a comedy of bad manners because some of the characters are so brutally honest and direct. They say exactly what they think in situations where a more polite, careful discourse would be expected.
"I love these characters. I think they're making wild missteps in their attempts to love, but I think they're doing the best they can."
Beyond seeing a prolific bit of theatre, audiences will additionally enjoy the treat of local connections.
"I think local audiences will find Gina's irreverent Rhode Island references astute and charming," Shea says. "I'm sure Gina spent enough time here to consider herself a bit of a ro-DI-lunder."
If given the choice between a witty, acerbic, cynic and a genuinely warm, kind, caring, drip, who would you choose? Why?
Though over-simplified, these questions are at the core of Gina Gionfriddo's biting comedy Becky Shaw, which is currently playing at 2nd Story Theatre in Warren, RI through February 20, 2010.
After the death of their father, Suzanna (Rachel Morris) and Max (Ara Boghigian) confuse intimacy with attraction and have sex - with each other. Now, Suzanna and Max are not actually, but have been raised as, brother and sister.
Max is a young, sharp, successful, businessman who is concerned about the future of the family business and is stepping in to fill his father's shoes. Suzanna may have felt she needed a father-replacement or a lover, but once-attracted, the duo are just as quickly and forcefully repelled.
Suzanne falls for, and in short order marries, the next guy she dates. Her husband Andrew (Tim White) is an alt-rock, would-be writer / office manager who is as heartfelt as he is humdrum.
Andrew thinks that Max, with his Type A personality, success and sardonic wit would be a perfect match for an aimless, under-employed, though clearly intelligent, woman he works with: Becky Shaw (Hillary Parker). Finally! The title character...and it does feel a bit like "Finally!".
The blind date is and ensuing interactions are, by almost any standard, save sleeping with your sister after burying your father, a disaster. It is, I suppose, about perspective.
Ms. Gionfriddo has constructed a deft, intricate, social commentary on wealth and social class and the impermanence of both. The play flourishes or fails on the ability of the actor playing Max to say the meanest, brutally honest and unnecessary things without turning off the audience. Max is an asshole, but he has to be entertaining or it doesn't work. Ara Boghigian handles the task with delightful self-possession and poise; beyond what we have seen before.
Hillary Parker keeps the mystery about Becky Shaw intact. Is she really, truly, a shark under all of that birthday cake exterior or is she just misunderstood?
Rachel Morris and Tim White get the short end of the stick as comedic straight men, though both turn in fine performances.
Paula Faber, who can steal a scene out from under any lead actor, especially in a role that calls for it, goes riotously right up to that edge.
Director Ed Shea has produced a sparse and extremely fast-paced and wryly funny production which, mostly, works extremely well.
The current comedy at 2nd Story Theatre is "Becky Shaw" by Gina Gionfriddo. The show is a sharp witted examination of family and romantic relationships centered around a catastrophically bad blind date. A newly wed couple in Providence fixes up two of their romantically challenged friends, wife's best friend and husband's sexy and strange new co-worker. When an evening calculated to bring happiness takes a dark turn, crises and comedy ensue in this new play that asks what we owe the people we love and the strangers who land on our doorsteps. Becky is a needy, down-on-her-luck college dropout whose one date with mean-spirited Max sets off shock waves in the lives of her colleague Andrew and his bride, Suzanna. Further complicating matters is Suzanna's say-anything mother, Susan, who may be dating a con artist. Ed Shea casts the best five performers in these roles and obtains stunning performances from them, which keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Ed has them hit all the right nuances in these characters, building the emotion packed scenes splendidly. He has the story unfold beautifully from the opening moments which define mother, daughter and adopted son. Into their lives come Andrew who Suzanna met on a ski trip and Becky who works with Andrew. Ed is aided in his task by costume designer Ron Cesario while Max Ponticelli as production manager keeps the set changes going smoothly from scene to scene. The show is a comedy about bad manners and what happens to the participants. The author , Gina Gionfriddo spent ten years in RI, she is a graduate of the M.F.A. Playwriting Program at Brown University and taught writing classes at Brown, Providence College and Rhode Island College. Gionfriddo takes a look at how class, sex and money influence dating,. Reeling after her beloved father's death, spoiled Suzanna leans as always on Max, her adopted brother and money manager for their mother. But after Max gives Suzanna marching orders to lose the grief and get a life, they find themselves consummating an attraction years in the making. Eight months later, Suzanna has married budding novelist, Andrew who resents Max's hold over his suggestible wife and is a sucker for women in peril. Andrew arranges a blind date between Max and a temp at his office, the pretty but impoverished Becky. When their date goes wildly wrong, Becky deftly sets in motion a series of events that will force them all to confront who they really are, not who they wish to be. Ara Bohigian is superb as Max who tells people what he believes is true and isn't very diplomatic while doing so. He has many funny and emotion packed scenes in this show. Rachel Morris does topnotch work as Suzanna, running the gamut of emotions in this role from tearful, to angry, to ecstatic. She delivers a powerhouse performance as Suzanna whether she is speaking to her mother, husband, Max or Becky. Paula Faber as Susan is the biggest scene stealer in this show with her wacky lines and mannerisms and her dysfunctional relationship with her daughter. Paula's character solves the issues that confront them. Tim White is Andrew, Suzanne's husband. He is dynamic in this role trying to protect Suzanna and then Becky when he feels they have been wronged. Andrew comes to a solution that he imposes on both Suzanna and himself. Hilary Parker, a statuesque blonde, is Becky Shaw. When Becky first enters she is dressed in a tacky outfit designed to make the audience think she is a dumb blond but in the second act enters gangbusters, scaring the crap out of the audience at her fervor. She becomes the pursuer in the relationship and analyzes everything completely. Hilary is brilliant in this role, displaying a vulnerability underneath a powerful but unbalanced woman. When she screams "I don't want ghetto doctors", you as the audience take notice.
So for a contemporary, edgy, comedy, be sure to catch "Becky Shaw" at 2nd Story.
Life has been good to Gina Gionfriddo of late. The 41-year-old playwright, who went to graduate school at Brown and had a successful stint writing for the "Law & Order" franchise, now has a successful play on her hands - "Becky Shaw," which The New York Times called "scabrous and sharp-witted."
Gionfriddo, who spent a decade in Providence doing odd jobs while working on her writing, left for London last week to catch Thursday's opening of her play at the Almeida.
"Becky Shaw" has also been produced in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Atlanta and Australia. And now add Warren to that list. The show opens Friday at 2nd Story Theatre.
"Becky Shaw," about a catastrophically bad blind date, was a big hit off-Broadway in 2009. Gionfriddo said she held back the rights for a while in anticipation of a Broadway run. But that doesn't look likely. Broadway likes a star and Gionfriddo doesn't have one.
"This is an ensemble piece," said Gionfriddo, "and stars don't like ensemble pieces."
These days, Gionfriddo lives in New York, and is trying to subsist on TV residuals and money from "Becky Shaw," which has "done very well," as she writes plays. She admits, though, that she's not the world's most prolific writer.
To date, she has three full-length plays to her credit, not counting student efforts at Brown. She also likes to do a lot of rewriting, but most of that can't happen until you get a play on its feet with a cast of actors.
"Becky Shaw" is about two 30-something newlyweds who fix up their relationship-challenged friends. The consequences of that meeting play out over the second act.
And the play takes place in Providence. There is mention of the Decatur Lounge in the West End, and a character works at the "Coffee Collective," which is based on White Electric on Westminster Street.
Oddly, the success of "Becky Shaw," which was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer, has made it difficult for Gionfriddo to get back to writing. She said it's the bad reviews that fire her up and make her want to try harder. Glowing praise is something else again.
"It took me a while to kick myself in the butt and get writing again," she said.
But she has produced a second draft of a new, unnamed play about a love triangle in a college town. It was commissioned by Playwrights Horizons in New York, which has first crack at it.
As for "Becky Shaw," Gionfriddo said she is definitely coming to the 2nd Story opening.
"I have so many friends in Providence," she said.
"The kids I used to baby-sit for are now teenagers. Finally, they'll get to see something of mine."
Although playwright Gina Gionfriddo was raised in Washington, D.C., Rhode Island has also made its contributions, since she polished her writing skills at Brown University, where in the late 1990s she sought out eventual Pulitzer winner Paula Vogel and her MFA playwriting program, attracted by the kind of dark comedy Vogel was coming up with. Gionfriddo later taught writing there and at Providence College and Rhode Island College.
The creator of several well-received plays and a half-dozen prestigious awards and fellowships, from Obie to Guggenheim, perhaps her most celebrated comedy, Becky Shaw, is being staged at 2nd Story Theater (January 21 through February 6). It's been described as a comedy of bad manners and involves a disastrous blind date and numerous problematic personality disorders.
In London for its UK premiere, Gionfriddo took some time out for the following e-mail exchange, which was edited for space.
THE NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF BECKY SHAW LAST YEAR CALLED IT "A CORKER OF A NEW PLAY" AND "AS ENGROSSING AS IT IS FEROCIOUSLY FUNNY." THAT MUST HAVE BEEN EASY TO TAKE. BUT HOW DO YOU TAKE CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS IN PRINT, AND HAVE THEY EVER PROMPTED CHANGES IN A REWRITE?
Ah, reviews. The bad ones hurt and the good ones make me self-conscious and afraid. I only read them if there's a practical reason to read them. I read my Louisville reviews because I knew we were doing [Becky Shaw] in New York and I would have the time and the opportunity to make changes if I wanted to. And I read them in New York because inevitably people are gonna talk to me about them. I think I did some fine-tuning on the Becky character after Louisville, just to be sure what I wanted landed.
WHAT KINDS OF CHANGES DO YOU TEND TO MAKE AFTER YOU SEE AUDIENCE RESPONSES AT WORKSHOP AND PREVIEW PERFORMANCES?
I rarely change anything based on audience response. I get the most useful information from actors and dramaturgs during the workshop process. I would say the number one reason I've changed stuff is because an actor can't make it work. When I've got really, really good actors I take very seriously when they tell me that, say, an action doesn't feel truthful or a stretch of dialogue contradicts what I've been asking them to play. We cut an entire scene out of Becky Shaw the week before we started performances in Louisville. It was a good scene, but it was unnecessary and it was killing momentum in the second act. My experience is that actors hate to have lines taken away from them, so when the actors playing this scene said, "Yeah, get rid of it," I knew we were doing the right thing.
YOU'RE A WRITER/PRODUCER FOR NBC SERIES LAW & ORDER. HAS ITS DEMAND THAT YOU GET TO THE POINT QUICKLY AFFECTED YOUR PLAYWRITING?
It's actually helped me. I had a playwriting teacher tell me once that the greatest sin in playwriting was to be "willfully obscure." I think my early plays suffered from that, from a tendency to not dig deeply enough and use mystery and character ambiguity as excuses. There was a rigor to the Law & Order formula that I think made me a more effective writer. When you only have 42 minutes to tell a story, you have to get very disciplined about what is important and what isn't, and which details are most revelatory of what you're trying to say.
WHAT DID YOU GET OUT OF WORKING WITH PAULA VOGEL?
Paula was unshockable and had a great, dark sense of humor. She wasn't interested in making my plays nicer and more producible, and that allowed me to write from a really pure place. She would say, "You have to shatter the mold," which meant don't get lazy and just write what you know you do well and get can praise for.
WHAT'S YOUR CORE ADVICE TO WRITING STUDENTS?
To playwriting students, I say read, read, read. Read a play a day. I think that's the best education. Also, find a way to hear your work read aloud, even if it's just non-actor pals in your living room. There's only so much you can learn about your play without having heard it.