With Becky Shaw, playwright Gina Gionfriddo scathingly brings to life a most memorable character to add to the female monster gallery. Becky Shaw, the second of six full-length plays to open this year's 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, devastatingly depicts a cunning devious loser who wrecks her own life and the lives of others while quietly relishing her victimization.
When Becky (expertly played by Annie Parisse) turns up for a casual blind date, she's overdressed in a backless satin outfit that appalls Max (the excellent David Wilson Barnes), the rich money manager whose friends Suzanna (flawlessly performed by Mia Barron) and Andrew (perfectly personified by David Duffield) have arranged the date with Becky. Max, who grew up with Mia when her parents took him in, had been eager to change their brother/sister relationship but Suzanna, after a one-night stand, resisted and flew off to Las Vegas to marry Andrew, a ski buddy. "You look like a birthday cake," the hostile Max tells Becky, whom Andrew met at their workplace and pitied because of her "melancholic state." On their blind date Max and Becky are robbed at gunpoint, which traumatizes her so much that all her barely concealed neediness and dependence engulfs everyone around her. Eve Harrington demands sympathy!
Becky is a 35-year-old office temp with no cell phone, no money, no friends. Her life is a mess, she whines. No one in her racist family speaks to her because of her past romances with black men. She latches on to Andrew for hugs and reassurance (to Suzanna's annoyance) but she really wants to ensnare Max, who won't return her phone calls and wants no part of her.
Susan Slager (Janis Dardaris), Suzanna's cynical mother who suffered from multiple sclerosis and has a "redneck rent boy" lover named Lester, offers worldly wisdom (not always well received) during her appearances along with attempts to resolve difficulties in this dysfunctional crowd. Counseling the manipulative Becky, she tells her, "You may have been very victimized in your life; you may be a complete con artist. I don't know. My sense is you fall somewhere in the middle. Truth or con It's unattractive. We pity Job; we do not fall in love with him."
But Becky Shaw's menacing "Fatal Attraction" stance at curtain's end is enough to give pause. Gionfriddo, whose After Ashley was the major hit at the 2004 Humana Festival, exhibits her playwriting mastery once again with this powerful work.
