‘Becky Shaw’ review: Alden Ehrenreich is incredible in viciously funny first-date Broadway comedy

Discomfort at the theater usually makes the audience do one of two things: squirm or lean forward.

But the knock-out funny and audaciously awkward revival of the play “Becky Shaw,” which opened Monday night at the Hayes, triggers an uncommon third response — involuntary outbursts.

“Oh no no no no no no,” said a man near me when one of the quintet of East Coasters shot off another uncouth insult. Nobody shushed him, though, because a whole slew of folks couldn’t contain their feelings. It was like the shouting girls from “The Crucible” took a field trip to Broadway.

If you don’t know Gina Gionfriddo’s dark comedy that ran off-Broadway 17 years ago and is regularly produced around the country, its edginess and bottomless appetite for provocation could catch you off guard.  

It’s almost two decades old. Its title is nice and sitcom-ish, like “Ally McBeal.” And its plot hinges on a first date in sweet Rhode Island. 

Don’t be deceived. What a wicked little play “Becky” is.

This romantic meet-up from hell has been arranged by stressed-out Suzanna (Lauren Patten) and her puppydog husband Andrew (Patrick Ball). She’s a therapist who comes from wealth, and he’s an office worker who aspires to be a writer while dressing like a guitarist busking on the quad.

But why would they send Max, Suzanna’s adoptive brother and her family’s jerk of a money manager, on a blind date with Andrew’s co-worker, the bubbly and naive Becky (Madeline Brewer)? They pair about as well as steak and Twizzlers.

As the play bounds forward, marching through cultural minefields with gusto, we soon see that everybody, from the try-hard nice to the unabashedly naughty, has a terribly selfish motivation. 

And the characters we embrace and laugh with the most, just like Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” are the brave souls who openly admit it.   

Nobody wears that realist attitude and devilish mischief better than the revelatory Alden Ehrenreich as Max — the snappy 36-year-old money manager who goes to dinner with Becky.

The fun of Gionfriddo’s play is the way she has this feistiest of characters say, with such wit and boldness, offensive quips and unpopular takes that much of the audience will guiltily agree with. 

A crack about the aimlessness of modern protests strikes a nerve today. So does his ice-bucket observation that relationships cannot work when one partner brings a lot more to the table than the other.

Ehrenreich, a major talent who’s been dealt an unfair hand by Hollywood, is given the meatiest material of the cast. But the unique charm and liveliness he brings to it is vital. His idiosyncratic, casually vicious, worryingly lovable Max is one of the season’s must-see performances. Smart and sharp, he’s the lovechild of Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg and Johnnie Walker.      

His Max makes it easy to understand why, despite taking opposite life paths, Suzanna can’t shake her cantankerous brother.

Patten meanwhile is the embodiment of everybody’s college roommate, and watching her pour red wine and anxiously avoid making phone calls brings to mind a mocking word: “adulting.” Immature Suzanna leans on Max, perhaps unwisely, as her existence implodes. 

Her father — and his, sort of — has died and she’s struggling with her WASP mother Susan’s fling with a much younger man. Max is ambivalent about all of it, while hubby Andrew is almost claustrophobically touchy feely. Ball, with soft-serve hair, is fine as the least-interesting character.

Max’s ill-fated night with Becky, played with a serial killer’s determination by Brewer, douses every one of these problems in gallons of kerosene. And the flames light up difficult truths about modern courtship and marriages.  

Fanning them is erudite, 60-something Susan, Suzanna’s mother, performed by Linda Emond like she took a knife sharpener to her tongue and then strolled onstage. Susan, neither cutthroat nor passionate, expresses a wise Baby Boomer perspective: That growing up means making hard decisions and accepting consequences. She’s calm, cool and delectably eviscerating.

Gionfriddo’s play clearly covers a lot of risky ground — gender, race, politics, money — only it’s so relentlessly hysterical you barely notice the mark it leaves until the appetizers arrive. Adding to the entertainment, director Trip Cullman’s direction is sexy, light and swift. 

A word on the Hayes Theater. Since Second Stage Theater made the small venue its Broadway home in 2018, it’s become one of the most exciting doors for NYC playlovers to walk through. That “Take Me Out,” “Between Riverside and Crazy,” “Appropriate” and “Marjorie Prime” all played here within the last four years (“Purpose” was a rental — a fantastic rental) is a damn good track record.

Their latest winner is “Becky Shaw.”

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