UK Premiere
By Gina Gionfriddo
Directed By Peter DuBois
“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.”
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 adoptive brother Max for comfort, and their mutual desire begins to resurface.
Gina Gionfriddo’s play is a biting American comedy that enjoyed massive success Off-Broadway in 2009.
Max
David will be making his British stage debut as Max, a role which he created in the World Premiere and Off-Broadway productions of Becky Shaw in 2009. His many New York theatre credits on and off-Broadway include The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Vengeance, Hamlet and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Television includes: The Good Wife; Law and Order; You Don’t Know Jack.
Film includes: Taking Woodstock; The Scene; Capote.
David Wilson Barnes is appearing with the permission of UK Equity, incorporating the Variety Artistes’ Federation, pursuant to an exchange program between American Equity and UK Equity.
Susan
Haydn was last on stage in the West End as Billy Elliot’s ballet teacher in the multi award-winning Billy Elliot the Musical, a role she went on to recreate on Broadway. She is also well-known for her role as Alex in Channel 4’s Drop the Dead Donkey. For the RSC she has appeared in Merry Wives of Windsor, Peer Gynt, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Theatre includes: The Memory of Water (Hampstead Theatre); City of Angels (West End); The Recruiting Officer (Manchester Royal Exchange).
Television includes: Sherlock; Rome; Consenting Adults; Peak Practice; Mersey Beat.
Film includes: Remember Me; Hunky Dory (due for release 2011).
Becky
Daisy Haggard was previously at the Almeida in Jonathan Kent’s production of Ivanov. More recently she has been touring in the Theatre Royal Bath’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest. On television she is best know for roles in Psychoville, Man Stroke Woman and Green Wing.
Theatre includes: The UN Inspector (National Theatre); Master and Margarita; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chichester Festival Theatre).
Television includes: Saxondale; Clocking Off; My Family.
Film includes: Nicholas Nickleby; Hard to Swallow.
Suzanna
Anna has recently been seen at the National Theatre in Earthquakes in London. For the RSC her credits include The Roman Actor, The Malcontent and Love In A Wood. She will also be appearing in the film Strawberry Fields, due for release in 2011.
Theatre includes: The Philanthropist; The Cosmonauts Last Message (Donmar Warehouse); Coram Boy (National Theatre); Contractions (Royal Court).
Television includes: The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister; Hustle; Waking the Dead; Sense and Sensibility.
Film includes: Brideshead Revisited; In Bruges.
Andrew
Vincent is making his British professional theatre debut in Becky Shaw having appeared in The Blue Room at Theatre du Marais, Paris.
Theatre includes: Measure For Measure; Four; Crimes in Hot Countries; Antigone; The Recruiting Officer (RADA).
Television includes: La Prophetie D’Avignon; Chat Bleu, Chat Noir.
Film includes: Frostbite; W.E.; Moliere.
Writer
Gina was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Becky Shaw, which had its world premiere at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and its New York premiere Off-Broadway at Second Stage. Gina has received an Obie Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Outer Critics Circle Award, The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and an American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg citation. Gina attended the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown. She has taught writing at Brown, Providence College, and Rhode Island College.
Plays include: After Ashley (Humana Festival / The Vineyard Theatre, New York / US regional tour / Poland); U.S. Drag (Off-Broadway by the stageFARM / regional productions); Guinevere (O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference); Squalor; America’s Got Tragedy (commissioned and presented by the stageFARM).
Writing for television includes: Supervising Producer for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire; Law & Order; Law & Order: Criminal Intent; Cold Case; The Borgias.
Other writing includes: essays on rock music for the literary journal The Believer; short fiction for Canteen.
Currently she is working on new play commissions from Playwrights Horizons and Center Theatre Group.
Director
Peter was previously the Artistic Director of Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska. Prior to his work at Perseverance, Peter lived and worked in the Czech Republic, where he co-founded Asylum, a multi-national squat theatre in Prague. Peter served for five years as the Associate Producer and then Resident Director of The Public Theater, New York. In July 2008 he became the Artistic Director of The Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, where he will direct the world premiere of Son of the Prophet this spring.
Theatre includes: Vengeance is the Lord’s; Prelude to a Kiss; Becky Shaw; The Miracle at Naples (Huntington Theatre, Boston); Trust; Becky Shaw (Second Stage Theater, New York); Jack Goes Boating; A View from 151st Street; Biro; Richard III; Measure for Pleasure; Mom; How did you meet the Beatles? (The Public Theater, New York); The Seagull; The Winter’s Tale; Romeo and Juliet; Glass Menagerie; In the Blood; Long Season (Perseverance Theatre, Alaska); The Curse of the Starving Class (American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco).
Design
For the Almeida: The Homecoming; Big White Fog.
Theatre includes: The Goat / Any Given Day (Traverse, Edinburgh); Philadelphia Here I Come (Dublin); Six Degrees Of Separation; National Anthems (Old Vic); Rain Man; Some Girls; Twelfth Night; Smaller; Blackbird (West End); Henry IV Parts I and II; King Lear; Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare’s Globe); Journey’s End (West End / Broadway); Swan Lake (San Francisco Ballet); The American Plan; Pygmalion (New York); Happy Now?; The Mentalists; Burn / Citizenship / Chatroom (National Theatre); Mixed Up North; Duck (Out Of Joint); Talking to Terrorists (Out of Joint and Royal Court); The Sugar Syndrome (Royal Court); Kindertransport; Breakfast with Emma (Shared Experience); Midsummer Night’s Dream (Canada); Brighton Beach Memoirs (Watford Palace Theatre); Crown Matrimonial (Guildford / Tour); The Faith Healer (The Gate, Dublin / Broadway); God of Hell (Donmar Warehouse); In The Club; Born Bad; In Arabia We’d All Be Kings; Abigail’s Party; What the Butler Saw (Hampstead Theatre); The Tempest (Tron Theatre); M.A.D.; Little Baby Nothing (Bush Theatre).
Jonathan was Associate Designer on Disney’s The Lion King, which premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway and has subsequently opened worldwide. His set design for Journey’s End won the Tony Award in 2007 for Best Revival.
Lighting
For the Almeida: Brighton Rock; Big White Fog; The Lightning Play; Enemies; Blood Wedding; Whistling Psyche.
Theatre includes: Racing Demon; An Enemy of the People (Sheffield Crucible); The Three Musketeers (Rose Theatre); Lend Me A Tenor (Plymouth); Tell Me on A Sunday (tour); Master Class (Theatre Royal Bath); The Critic / Real Inspector Hound; Bingo; The Master Builder; Oklahoma; The Grapes of Wrath; Cyrano De Bergerac (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Secret Garden (Edinburgh Festival Theatre / Toronto); The Cherry Orchard; Arthur and George (Birmingham Rep); Dirty Dancing (West End / Toronto / Hamburg / Utrecht / USA tour / Berlin); The History Boys (tour / West Yorkshire Playhouse); Alphabetical Order (also tour); Darker Shores; Amongst Friends (Hampstead Theatre); A Month in the Country (Salisbury Playhouse); Cinderella (Old Vic); Sleeping Beauty (New York / Barbican / Young Vic); Henry IV Parts I and II (Washington Shakespeare); The Play What I Wrote (Broadway / West End); Merrily We Roll Along (Donmar Warehouse); Hamlet (Japan / Sadler’s Wells); Yes Prime Minister; Toyer; Imagine This; Bad Girls The Musical; Otherwise Engaged; As You Like It; Romeo and Juliet; Of Mice and Men (West End). Working extensively with the RSC, his recent credits include Morte D’Arthur, Twelfth Night and Hamlet.
Opera includes: Die Frau Ohne Schatten; Elektra (Mariinsky, Russia); Ariadne Auf Naxos (WNO/Boston); Die Fledermause (WNO).
Dance includes: productions for Northern Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells.
Casting
For The Almeida: Ruined; The Doctor’s Dilemma.
Theatre includes: Journey’s End (Duke of York Theatre); Twelfth Night (The Albery Theatre); Broken Glass; Tribunal plays; The Great Game; Women, Power & Politics; Greta Garbo Came to Donegal; Not Black and White; Let There Be Love; Doubt; Playboy of the West Indies; 10 Rounds; Two; Trains Running; The Piano Lesson; A Lovesong for Ulster (Tricycle Theatre); Enlightenment; .45; Beasts and Beauties; Tiger Country (Hampstead Theatre).
Film and television includes: 6 series of Spooks; 3 series of Outnumbered; The Sculptress; Hunter; Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee; Bedtime; Chopratown; New Tricks (series one); Trevor’s World of Sport; Point of Rescue; The Fixer; Fairy Tales; Talk To Me; Nicholas Nickleby; Kingdom; Under The Greenwood Tree;
POW; Generation Kill; Five Days; Tsunami: The Aftermath; Not Only But Always; UK casting on Titanic; Conspiracy The Meeting at Wansee; A Knight’s Tale; Tomorrow La Scala; Redtails; Episodes; Bhaji on the Beach; The Walker.
Dialect
For the Almeida: Rope; Parlour Song; In a Dark Dark House; Nocturne; The Last Days of Judas Iscariot; Cloud Nine; Awake and Sing!; Big White Fog; There Came a Gypsy Riding; Tom and Viv; An Earthly Paradise; The Late Henry Moss; The Mercy Seat; Camera Obscura; The Shape of Things.
Recent theatre includes: Blood and Gifts (National Theatre); Passion; A Streetcar Named Desire (Donmar Warehouse); Piaf; FrostNixon (Donmar West End); Clybourne Park; Aunt Dan and Lemon; The Fever; Tusk,Tusk; Wig Out!; The Pride; The Girlfriend Experience (Royal Court); Speed The Plow (Old Vic); All My Sons; Legally Blonde The Musical; The Little Dog Laughed; Spring Awakening; A View from the Bridge; Carousel; Shadowlands; Fiddler on the Roof; Boeing, Boeing (West End); Noughts and Crosses; King Lear; The Winter’s Tale; The Crucible (RSC); Bingo (Chichester Festival Theatre).
Recent television includes: Downton Abbey; Zen; Any Human Heart; Small Island; Margaret; A Short Stay in Switzerland; The Curse of Steptoe; Sincerely Yours; Fantabuloso; The Deal; Blackpool; Pierrepoint.
Film includes: My Week With Marilyn; Tamara Drewe; Special Relationship; Nowhere Boy; The Queen; Cheri; The Damned United; FrostNixon; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; The Edge of Love; Infamous; Nanny McPhee; Mrs Henderson Presents; Dirty Pretty Things; Ladies in Lavender; The Importance of Being Earnest; The War Zone; Elizabeth.
Radio includes: A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Assistant Director
As Director: You Do It All Again (Royal Exchange Studio, Manchester); Intolerance (King’s Head); Iphigenia at Aulis; Much Ado About Nothing (Warwick Arts Centre Studio); Cymbeline; Betrayal (Capital Centre, Warwick).
As Assistant Director:Carmen (Opera Holland Park); Macbeth; See How They Run; Antigone (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester).
★★★★ “It remains sharp and funny to the end, and presents its characters with the irony and wit of a latter-day Jane Austen.”
Daily Telegraph
★★★★ “Every line is a poisoned dart and every character is an assassination. It’s tough on them, but sublimely funny for us."
Time Out
★★★★ “Slick and unmistakably American humour that comes from Gina Gionfriddo’s scalpel-sharp skewering of the liberal consensus.”
Evening Standard
"Becky Shaw is assured, astute and an off-Broadway hit; it comes to the Almeida in a production by Peter DuBois that is at once smooth and fizzy."
The Observer