Book description
I'm also going to give you some advice. Your husband is not the Red
Cross. The last time he started consoling a cute, suicidal chick, he
married her. Becky Shaw is an amusing and cleverly constructed comedy
about ambition, the cost of being truthful, and the perils of a blind
date. The fast and funny dialogue navigates between five distinctively
perverse and disingenuously dysfunctional characters. The plot is as
follows: from the moment that Becky arrives overdressed for her blind
date with straight-talking Max, it's clear the evening won't go to plan.
In the immediate fallout, Becky becomes an object of devotion for her
boss Andrew, who appears to have a fetish for vulnerable women. In turn
Andrew's wife Suzanna turns to her step-brother Max for comfort, and
their mutual desire begins to resurface. Gina Gionfriddo's masterful
play is a biting American comedy with sharp, witty dialogue and a
carefully crafted yet unforced story arc. Character-driven, Becky Shaw
is a comic tale of tangled love lives and a subtle but acerbic comedy of
manners. 'It remains sharp and funny to the end, and presents its
characters with the irony and wit of a latter-day Jane Austen.' Charles
Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 24. 1.11 '...it is dazzlingly written and
studded with rapier-sharp lines,' Financial Times, 24. 1.11 'Every line
is a poisoned dart and every character is an assassination. It's tough
on them but sublimely funny for us: Gionfriddo's play has the moral
subtlety of Jane Austen but it yanks its characters' illusions down with
the off-kilter ease that's usually the trademark of access-all-areas TV
satirists like Larry David or Tina Fey.' Caroline McGinn, Time Out
London, 27. 1.11 'Becky Shaw, another new play, is a ferociously funny
comedy of outrageously bad manners by American Gina Gionfriddo. From the
start, you're riveted.' Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday, 30. 1.11 Gina
Gionfriddo is an American writer whose plays include After Ashley, U. S
Drag, Squalor and America's Got Tragedy. She has won an Obie Award, the
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Helen Merrill Prize for Emerging
Playwrights, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
