“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s the opening line in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Nearly 150 years later, that little piece of wisdom is echoed in another work bearing the title of a female character: Becky Shaw. And while it might be unfair to compare the great Russian novel to Gina Gionfriddo’s trenchant play depicting family dysfunction, it is a marvelous piece of writing enhanced by a production that scores immaculately on all fronts.
Let’s begin with the playwriting. Gionfriddo’s script is lean and mean (quite literally). With just five characters she crafts a compelling story about damaged souls tied together by fate and desperation. Two of them spew unvarnished truth like rattlesnakes spitting out venom. And while it’s loaded with zingers, there’s nothing contrived here. The lines are as perceptive as they are brutally funny.
It is hard to seize on a particular message because the play tackles so many big ideas – what is love, what is goodness, what is sexuality, why are we attracted to the wrong people, and how do we survive the dysfunction that screws up our lives? I’ll try not to provide any spoilers because half the fun is figuring out how it all could possibly end. But for now, I can say the characters are each organically drawn and impeccably acted.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
And that brings us to the wonderful ensemble. All of the actors manage to find that sweet spot turning what could be broad characterizations into flawed people we could know.
We first meet Suzanna (Lauren Patten) dressed in black, lying in a hotel bedroom watching a true crime program. After a few moments, Max (Alden Ehrenreich) bursts in, instantly shuts off the TV and tells her to stop with the grief. Suzanna’s been in mourning for the last four months ever since her father died, while Max, who was adopted by Suzanna’s parents when he was ten years old, has clearly moved on with his life. They are very different people. She’s sensitive. He’s pragmatic and gruff. And though they were raised as siblings, there is a spark between them. Opposites, as they say, attract.
Max, in his 30’s, has built a successful career as a money manager and he’s invited his adopted mother, Susan (Linda Emond) and Suzanna to come to New York in order to discuss the family finances which are not in very good shape.
Susan is a piece of work. Cold and intimidating with a shrewdness that cuts right to the bone. She has multiple sclerosis but if it’s slowed her at all, it’s only quickened her tongue. Unlike her daughter, she’s gotten over the loss of her husband and has taken up with a lover. Consider this exchange:
Susan: 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: How can you… It’s a huge loss.
Susan: It’s an old man dying peacefully. It’s not tragic.
Eight months later, we find Suzanna married to Andrew (Patrick Ball – from HBO’s The Pitt). He is everything that Max is not – thoughtful and empathetic. But is that enough for Suzanna?
Andrew is described as a guy with a radical feminist side who cries at the sight of pornography. Susan sees him as a do-gooder, acidly observing “Goodness and incompetence too often go hand-hand in men.” True to an extent, but Patrick Ball does a nice job of making sure we can’t write him off.
Lauren Patten as Suzanna displays the natural talents that won her the Featured Actress Tony Award six years ago in Jagged Little Pill. It’s a subtler role but she puts an indelible stamp on it as a smart but confused woman perpetually split between what she wants and what she needs.
She and Andrew arrange a blind date for Max to meet Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), a temp from Patrick’s office. Mousy and awkward, Becky’s clearly not Max’s type, but she’s no shrinking violet either. Arriving late in the first act, she turns out to be the catalyst that makes everything unravel. What’s she really after? Madeline Brewer expertly keeps us guessing.
Susan finds something of a kindred spirit in young Becky and she offers this dating advice: “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,”
Linda Emond must be having a blast as the sharp-tongued Susan. And in Kaye Voyce’s elegant costumes, she looks like a woman who’s got it all figured out. Practically everything out of her mouth is poison-tipped and delivered with the tangiest relish.
Gionfriddo wrote Becky Shaw 18 years ago; and except for a few dated references, it holds up beautifully. She has a psychoanalyst’s gift for understanding people right down to the core. It certainly shows with this prescient line: “No one respects a woman who forgives infidelity. It’s why Hilary Clinton will never be President.”
Among all the production’s virtues, enough can’t be said about Alden Ehrenreich as the emotionally stunted Max. He is unrelentingly coarse and brash, but Ehrenreich manages to expose the tiniest glimmer of a heart and he comes across as infernally human. It’s a stellar Broadway debut.
Trip Cullman directs this gem of a play with the precision of a jeweler’s blade. Every movement, choice of music, and even scene changes are meticulously designed. And at two and a half hours, we are left wanting even more.
Becky Shaw was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009. It deserved to win. If there’s an overriding message in this play, it might be that there is no black and white in life, only a lot of gray matter accounting for the sum total of our experiences; and it’s what we learn from all of it that separates the good from the bad, especially in unhappy families.
Becky Shaw opened April 6, 2026 at the Helen Hayes Theater and runs through June 14. Tickets and information: 2st.com
