Becky Shaw – 09 April 2026

Becky Shaw is a decisive exploration of intimacy, blurred boundaries, and the duality of human kindness. Each character is creatively crafted to display the ways in which we weaponize kindness when acting from a place of selfishness. The show also examines the difference between love and marriage, including the idea that the bonds that are the closest are not always rooted in legality or blood. Featuring a truly incredible cast of five, Becky Shaw fights for the redeeming qualities in unlikable characters, and pulls on the heartstrings of an audience who, despite not wanting to admit it, can relate to them.

In a rather unusual take, I’d like to examine Becky Shaw from the ending to the beginning. At the end of the performance, protagonist Suzanna Slater (Lauren Patten) decides to leave with her husband, Andrew Porter (Patrick Ball) and not the man she loves, Max Garrett (Alden Ehrenreich). The reason for this decision is communicated in a palpable glance, not because it is the moral high ground, but out of spite because Max did not remember the anniversary of the death of Suzanna’s father. This decision is not about Suzanna’s father or about the fact that her husband, Andrew, did remember. It’s about hurting Max. At the end of a long, painful adventure, Suzanna reverts to her worst self—perhaps her only self. At the beginning of the journey, Suzanna was also at a version of her worst self—she was using her grief to manipulate Max into staying by her side.

Max, however, is not an innocent pawn. He also manipulates, hurts, and discards people. He tries to do this to Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), a friend who Andrew sets him up with, but ultimately fails due to her tenacity. Becky’s not collateral damage—she chases what she wants in both Max and Andrew, playing with fire with the two men Suzanna loves the most. For his part, Andrew gets some kind of perverse pleasure from his savior complex, and doesn’t seem to care whether he ends up with his wife or his coworker. The outside voice, but not the voice of objectivity, is Suzanna’s mom, Susan Slater (Linda Emond) who provides a unique, yet still turgidly murky perspective on love as a commodity that gets traded and used and shared and wasted depending upon people’s needs. All this to say, though Becky Shaw does have an interesting plot and a deliciously twisted story, it is the characters who make it shine. All of the actors are incredibly detail oriented in their performances, and the show is delightfully nuanced, purposeful, and intentional. The looks, glances, and touches send messages between the characters, weaving together the rich subtext of Gina Gionfriddo’s script.

The minimalist design helped keep the focus on the characters. One highlight was Kaye Voyce’s costume design, which really showed the emotional breakdown of each character, wordlessly indicating who in each scene was okay, and who was not. It’s very telling at the end that Becky is in a beautiful dress, fully intact and ready to keep going with her life, and that Suzanna is in a reddish brown hoodie, stained with tears. Costuming gives important clues to the characters’ states of mind that are not directly in the text. Andrew’s clothes got less fancy. Max’s clothes got increasingly opulent. Becky never changed her style. Susan became increasingly regal. Suzanna went from a black dress with white polka dots indicating the exaggeration of her mourning process to cozy modesty to childlike brokenness. I applaud Voyce’s contribution to the narrative elements of Becky Shaw.

Becky Shaw is performed with a directness and intensity that is rare in the real world but utterly fascinating to watch on stage. Each character is more psychologically twisted than the last, and they defy all attempts to sort them as good or bad. The story is riveting. It boldly asks the audience to weigh themselves and examine their own motives for being kind. Above all, it shows how little cannon fodder it takes to explode a person’s stability and eludes to how long it might take to mend broken lives after the explosion.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Polk & Co.