Gina Gionfriddo’s 2008 class-conscious satire receives a pitch-perfect revival in the new Broadway production directed by Trip Cullman for Second Stage Theater. With its expert cast firing on all cylinders, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Becky Shaw sends laughter rocketing throughout the audience with its scathing portrayal of social mores being blown to smithereens.
With its titular character clearly inspired by Becky Sharp, the central figure in William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel Vanity Fair, the play is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. But while it may lack the deeper resonances that would make it linger in the imagination, it offers the sort of rich plot twists and hilarious dialogue, not to mention delicious parts for actors, that have long made it a staple in regional theaters.
It’s clear that things are not going to go swimmingly between Becky (Madeline Brewster, The Handmaid’s Tale) — a thirty-five-year-old woman clearly adrift in life — and Max (Alden Ehrenreich, knocking it out of the park), an acerbic, well-heeled money manager, when they’re set up on a blind date.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★★ review here.]
“In as much as you can, don’t show him any weakness,” Becky is advised before their meeting. And when Max first sees her in her inappropriately florid dress, he comments, “You look like a wedding cake.”
The two have been set up by Suzanna (Lauren Patten, Jagged Little Pill), whose family took Max in years earlier, and her new husband Andrew (Patrick Ball), a struggling novelist frustrated with his low-paying office job. Complicating matters further is the emotionally charged relationship between Suzanna and her adopted brother, which goes far beyond familial ties.
A dramatic incident disrupts the date, but it only serves as a springboard for the play’s examination of the emotional wounds that are far too easily inflicted by issues of love and money.
Amusingly weighing in on both of those subjects is Suzanna’s upper-crust, MS-afflicted mother Susan (Linda Emond), who lets neither her physical disability nor her husband’s recent death get in the way of her relationship with a new, much younger lover who gets into trouble with the law.
The play’s themes are dealt with too baldly at times, and the situations have a contrived air. But it nonetheless exerts a hypnotic pull thanks in large part to the profusion of laugh lines and the complex characterizations that constantly keep the audience on their toes.
The play worked just fine in its previous Off-Broadway production, also presented by Second Stage, but it absolutely crackles here. Ehrenreich, bursting with charisma, is the clear standout, although he also benefits from his character having the funniest lines. Delivering insults with the panache of a Borscht Belt comedian, he subtly but devastatingly reveals the emotional desolation beneath Max’s brutal but always wildly entertaining nastiness. Emond delivers a master class in projecting disdainful authority through underplaying, and Brewer brings sly humor to her titular character whose seeming vulnerability masks a cunning ruthlessness.
Patten and Ball (the latter currently white-hot thanks to the streaming series The Pitt) are equally fine, although their more passive, reactive characters inevitably demand less attention.
Cullman’s razor-sharp staging keeps the play, which is arguably overlong at nearly two-and-a-half hours, moving in propulsive fashion, with even the scene changes proving giddily entertaining.
Becky Shaw opened April 6, 2026 at the Helen Hayes Theater and runs through June 14. Tickets and information: 2st.com
