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Hi and welcome to a review recap episode of Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tammanini. On today's episode, I'm going to run you through all of the reviews for the Broadway premiere of Gina Gianfredo's comedy Becky Shaw that opened at the Helen Hayes Theater from Second Stage on Monday night. This show originally premiered back in 2008 and it has taken this long to get it to Broadway, but based off of the reviews, it sure seems like it was worth the wait as of recording time. Review aggregator site Did They like it? Has collected 14 reviews. Twelve were positive, two were mixed, and if you're doing the math at home, zero were negative. The show is directed by Trip Coleman, one of the absolute best with dealing with modern plays and especially comedies. The cast is led by Patrick Ball of the TV show the Pit fame, Madeleine Brewer as the title character, Becky Shaw, movie star out in Iron Reich, along with Broadway favorites Linda Amand and Lauren Patton. The show is a biting comedy that focuses on a blind date that spirals spectacularly off the rails. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist back during its initial run. Second Stage is not only producing it on Broadway, but it actually produced the original version off Broadway a decade and a half ago. The press notes say that Becky Shaw will make you laugh, gasp, and maybe take a break from dating permanently. Let's start with the New York Times review and Laura Collins Hughes was not only positive, but she actually made the show a critics pick. But here's the thing. Don't read this review if you want to see the show. I don't understand why Laura does this all the time. She gives you the entire plot, spoils jokes, tells you what she thought the funniest parts were, what got the biggest reaction in the audience. Don't do that. Why is the New York Times spoiling everything about a show? Give us the bare bones so that we know if we're going to like it or not. If you want to do a play by play analysis, do that as something else, not as the review. That is not what a review is for, but that's neither here nor there. I have picked out some of the things that I think are the most important, but it was honestly pretty hard to do because every other sentence has some sort of spoiler. Nonetheless, she writes, quote, it feels significant that not a single female character in Becky Shaw is likable. All three are pretty off putting really, with Trip Coleman's Second Stage Theater production at the Helen Hayes Theater where it opened on Monday night. I mean that as a compliment. Besides which the play's male characters are also magnificently flawed. We don't require a rooting interest in them as individuals to be caught up in the story. The cast is terrific, the show moves fast, the many laugh lines land. These characters aren't likable at all, yet they do the job so well. We don't need them to be. Sarah Holdren, the critic of record, as far as I'm concerned, writing for Vulture, said, and in a moment when so much theater puts on kid gloves to handle its material and its audience, it can be bracing to have a play walk right up and slap you across the face. That's how Trip Coleman's taut Take no Prisoners production plays it. The pulse is allegro, the casual tone spiked with gasp inducing wickedness. Adam Feldman of Time Out New York was not only positive, but he gave the show five out of five stars, writing Becky Shaw is highly entertaining, a laugh a minute play whose comedic concerns are refreshingly up to date. What bumps it to the next level, it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009 are the Philosophical questions behind the banter can love be bought? When does support become manipulation? How might what seems more or less like a one night stand come to mean more or mean less? Juan A. Ramirez for Theaterly was also positive, saying, Second Stage, which produced its Off Broadway premiere, has brought it back for a Broadway premiere that's damn near perfect. Directed by Tripp Coleman with a dynamism that perfectly matches Gianfrito's ever surprising sensibilities, it introduces four pitch perfect performances before its title character even appears. Until then, it reacquaints us with mean comedy, the type that punches every which way without stooping to aimless scrappy doo belligerence. Hayley Levitt, reviewing the show for Theatremania, said, it's Gina Gianfredo's iron guts that make an incisive, observant, scathing and hilarious play like Becky Shaw possible. Shayna Russell of Entertainment Weekly was also positive, saying, on the merit of its script alone, Becky Shaw is a rousing success. Not only is it deliciously darkly hilarious, it's excitingly clever in its simplicity. Arguably, not much happens on stage in real time. In fact, the biggest event in the show occurs offstage. But we get the pleasure of the aftermath and there's oh so much angst and drama to relish in. The plaudits for the entire cast are very strong. Laura Collins Hughes in the Times did refer to Madeline Brewer playing Becky Shaw as reminding her of Madeline Kahn, which is in a comedy about as good as you can get, but a lot of the reviews specifically talked about out in Aynreich. In his Broadway debut, Johnny Oleksinski for the New York Post said, Iron Reich, 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 love child of Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg and Johnny Walker. One of the two mixed reviews comes from Adrian Horton of the Guardian saying that the show can't sustain this charge through its erratic second act is more a book issue than performance. The aftermath of Becky and Max's unseen date are downstream conversations between characters that reveal the lopsidedness of their constitutions. Let's wrap up with one more positive this one comes to us from Chris Jones of the New York Daily News. He said this keenly observed and highly entertaining play now on Broadway at Second Stage's Helen Hayes Theatre under the unpretentious but lively direction of True Coleman, seems to have been lying in wait for this particular moment when we're finally waking up to the consequences of a society that somehow decided every deeply felt emotion was worth both focus and validation. If you would like to read more of these and other reviews that I did not sample, I will have the Did They Like It? Review roundup in the show notes so you can check them all out. Although, as I said, if you want to see the show as unspoiled as possible, don't read the Times review, Save it for later. You can read it. It's a fine review, but it's more of a play by play of what happens in the show than an actual critical review. All right, I will be coming to you either tonight on Tuesday or on Wednesday morning with all of the reviews from Cats, the Jellicle Ball that is opening at the Broadhurst on Tuesday night. Cannot wait to see all of those. We will also have the Death of a Salesman reviews coming up later in the week as well, followed by Titanic on Sunday. All right, everybody, thank you so much for supporting Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio thanks again for listening. This has been Matt Tammanini and I'll talk to you soon.