This Becky Has NOTHING To Do With Thackeray Or GB Shaw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   Darlings, how many parties have we been to where an individual or group is conversing with us, and mentally we just don't care, and say, inside our heads, "Why don't you just get the hell out of here?"

                                     The answer is many.  And Gina Gionfriddo's play "Becky Shaw" leaves the audience, like party guests, captive among people they would rather not be with.

                                       Let's start with the playwright.  Gina Gionfriddo.  Sounds like she should be working behind the counter at a pizza parlor.  As for her writing, she cannot seem to decide if what she is going for is "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?," "Fatal Attraction," or "Promising Young Woman."  What emerges is two hours of histrionics blending all three and not succeeding very well at any of them.

                                         Thank God for Linda Emond, who livens things up.  When she speaks, she knows how, and what could be rantings have some dramatic meaning.  Too bad the rest of the cast does not follow her example.  And Lauren Patten, who plays Emond's daughter, Suzanna is supposed to be going for a doctorate in psychology at NYU?  If she can't reign it in long enough for normal conversation, then she should drop the program and go into something else, because it is clear she will not make it as a psychologist.

                                           The other characters are not much better, and while they do follow through on what they are supposed to do, Gionfriddo and director Trip Cullman might just as well have told the cast unitedly, "Just go out there, and scream the playwright's grievances to the audience".  But are they her grievances. Are Suzanna and Becky stand-ins for the author?  Does anybody care?  I certainly did not.

                                               Yet the audience seemed to be lapping it up.  Has the theater become so expensive that audiences will applaud at the most mediocre material?  The answer is yes; I have seen applause at far worst.  

                                              "Becky Shaw" is to be avoided.  For those having children or grandchildren--their school play would be more theatrically satisfying than this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                  Raspberries!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!