Theatre
Becky Shaw
St James Cavalier

When do duties and moral obligations to others start – and when do they go too far?

... a kind of play which reminds us what it means to be human and face the hurdles life throws at us- André Delicata

Director Anthony Bezzina made his usual excellent casting choices to explore this question in Masquerade’s current production of Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw.

Dubbed a comedy, I found it fitted the category of dark comic humour more appropriately than it did mainstream.

The play’s action develops over a span of several months with rather too many scene changes for a small space like the theatre in the round at St James.

However, these were managed efficiently by an ingeniously simple and stylish set designed by Angele Galea, which transformed one interior into another quite different one with relative ease.

Max Garrett, played by Toni Attard, is a cynical, practical man who doesn’t mince his words and is economical with his thoughts.

Mr Attard gave a strong and enjoyable portrayal of a man who knows what he likes and isn’t afraid of getting it… until he meets his match in an unworthy rival whom he despises for embodying traits he finds pathetic – Becky Shaw.

His relationship with Suzanna Slater, into whose family he was adopted, is strong and is suffused with sexual tension, but even that is strained due to Becky’s petulant interference.

Laura Best’s portrayal of Suzanna was heartfelt and genuine and gave the character the depth it needed to counterbalance Becky’s flighty attitude. Max’s unfortunate date with Becky leads to a spiralling turn of events, which scriptwriter Gina Gionfriddo uses to explain the characters’ original motivations and personal stories.

I found the script to be rather uneven because it was quite wordy in the first act and tended to supply far too much backstory without really developing the action.

The only significant change between the first and second scene was the swift passage of time and Suzanna’s marriage.

In quite a few scenes the staging was forward-facing and the two side-audiences were deprived of seeing much of the facial expressions that the cast member on their side was making.

In my particular case, Mr Attard’s excellent expression was a joy to see, as he was standing opposite my stage-side while addressing Laura Best, whose position gave a section of the audience considerably less of a chance to see her visual emotional journey in the first act.

However, Ms Best’s vocal expression more than made up for it.

Her pitch, while being slightly high, was moderated by a richly diverse tone and her voice made her character come alive.

Suzanna’s strained relationship with her mother, Susan, keeps her dithering about making strong life choices – in contrast to her mother who bulldozes ahead, fully confident in her decisions.

Sue Scantlebury’s performance as Susan was poised and controlled.

What I liked about the scripting was that she had the least verbose lines but the most incisive, valid and insightful ones which came from experience and did not allow her to get sucked into Becky’s manipulative wheedling.

Her character was constructed to develop from a stubborn and rather selfish old woman into one whom experience has taught much and who turns out to be very likable in the end.

The second act proved to be much fresher and swifter-paced than the first and gave the production the balance and drive it needed.

It saw Malcolm Galea gain a stronger presence as Suzanna’s strained thespian husband trying to juggle writing and a depressing office job.

As Andrew Porter, his lack of maturity manifests itself in a dangerous desire to save people from themselves akin to the knight-in-shining-armour syndrome.

The sad reality is that as he, and consequently his wife, get sucked into Becky’s passive-aggressive neediness before coming to terms with their own foibles, Andrew runs the risk of jeopardising all that his life revolves around for the sake of Becky’s flighty, childish petulance.

Mr Galea gave a good performance as the ever-pleasant and consequently rather annoying Andrew, who unintentionally allows the conniving Becky to latch on to his good nature.

Isabel Warrington’s sharp performance was spot on as Becky Shaw, an emotionally damaged woman who tries to play the femme fatale while allowing everybody to see through the flawed cracks of her exterior façade.

She was a catalyst for the other characters to gain a better perspective of themselves and while she is the character who gives the play its name, it is more about the “Becky Shaw effect” than actually about her.

With a cast of characters who all portray traits that one can identify with and recognise – despite their not being the most laudable to admit to having – Becky Shaw is the kind of play that reminds us what it means to be human and face the hurdles that life throws at us.

A play not to be missed because it provokes thought beyond the circle of the performance.