The Max Garrett Problem: Becky Shaw on Broadway
Photo by Marc J. Franklin
The line for the women's bathroom at the Hayes Theater during intermission wasn't moving because people needed to use the bathroom. It was moving slowly because nobody could stop talking about Max Garrett.
That's the Alden Ehrenreich effect. As Max, the adopted son of a dysfunctional family, Ehrenreich delivers an astonishing Broadway debut. He’s a raging, roiling alpha who wields words like a battering ram, never happier than when he's engaged in combat with someone he's decided deserves it. And who deserves it? Anyone and everyone, save his foster sister Suzanna and her mother, Susan. He is magnetic and infuriating and occasionally completely right. The lobby at intermission had the energy of a jury that couldn't agree on a verdict. Is he a monster? Is he just honest? Do you know someone like him? Are you a little bit like him? This is Ehrenreich's Broadway debut, and he deserves a Tony for it.
Lauren Patten plays Suzanna, and she is not the stable center of the story. She's emotionally volatile, ricocheting between need and seduction in ways that make her both sympathetic and exhausting. You understand why Max finds her difficult and also can’t stay away.
Linda Emond plays Susan, so narcissistic she named her daughter after herself, and the barbs she throws at Suzanna are delivered with the cruelty of someone who has known exactly where to aim for decades. Many of them land because they're not entirely wrong. Emond is dynamic and terrifying, and the realities of the house Suzanna and Max were raised in simmer underneath the surface of the play throughout.
Patrick Ball plays Andrew, Suzanna's new husband, and the character is a wet towel. Ball leans into the good-guy charm he carries over from The Pitt without finding much underneath it. He's likable and without an edge, which makes it harder to understand what Suzanna sees in him as a woman who clearly needs a sparring partner.
Madeline Brewer as Becky Shaw is the kind of person we’ve all met; you just can’t put your finger on what was off about them. Brewer plays her at a frequency that keeps you slightly unsettled.
Becky Shaw is a very funny play about very uncomfortable things. Go see it, and then stand in the lobby afterwards and argue about Max Garrett with a stranger. That's the whole experience.