Fixing up a friend is always a gamble. If the date turns into a disaster, will you be blamed? Worse yet, will you be dragged into the aftermath if the two parties go to war? Becky Shaw, now at the Second Stage Theater, will discourage even the most enthusiastic matchmaker to opt out and recommend match.com instead.
The blind date starts innocently enough. Andrew (Dashiell Eaves), an aspiring author newly married to Suzanna (Emily Bergl) arranges for one of his co-workers, Becky Shaw (Annie Parisse) to meet Max, played with relish by David Wilson Barnes. Although Andrew knows that his wife and Max are close (as a boy, Max moved in with Suzanna’s family) he doesn’t know that Max is in love with Suzanna. Anything short of Angelina Jolie would not be enough to engage Max’s interest.
At first glance, Becky seems no match for the aggressive, cynical Max. When she shows up for the blind date in a frilly pink dress, she not only seems horribly overdressed but also fragile and vulnerable. Andrew and Suzanna back out of the date and we fear that Becky will be at Max’s mercy.
The evening turns out to be the evening from hell. Max and Becky are held up at gunpoint and spend some time in the police station and then in Max’s bed. Max is ready to write off the experience and we are ready to write him off as a cad. But then the scales begin to tip and we realize we have underestimated Becky’s steely resolve. (Parisee is wonderful in transforming her character from sniveling victim into a woman with resolve). She simply refuses to be brushed off and we have a flashback to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (“I’m not going to be ignored!”) particularly when Becky threatens to kill herself. Our empathy for Becky now seems premature. Do we even believe her story about why she dropped out of Brown and doesn’t speak to her parents? The play turns into “Who Do You Trust?” with no ready answers.
Gina Gionfriddo, the playwright, is a graduate of Brown’s M.F.A. Playwriting Program and currently a writer/producer for NBC’s Law & Order. It’s no coincidence that the dialogue snaps and crackles the same way it does on the popular crime drama. If Law & Order is sometimes short on fleshing out its characters, Gionfriddo has the freedom to do that with this play. We understand Max’s attachment to Suzanna, someone he knew from childhood as a sister and now longs to have as a wife. Susan (an outstanding performance turned in by Kelly Bishop) although the matriarch of the family, is caught up in her own misfortunes (she has MS and is widowed), yet her keen eye misses nothing and she pulls no punches in the family encounters.
In the end, Suzanna and her mother, Susan, are forced to reconcile some unfinished business from the past involving Suzanna’s father and, of course, Max. Nothing is tied up in a neat tiny bow. But then again, relationships are like that.
Becky Shaw
Second Stage Theater
307 West 43rd Street
212-787-8302
