Video: In Becky Shaw ‘Everybody Is Terrible,’ However That is What Makes It a Enjoyable Time

It’s nice to play somebody good, however generally, you simply need to play somebody dangerous. At least that is what Alden Ehrenreich says when discussing his newest venture, Gina Gionfriddo’s comedy Becky Shaw, at present working on Broadway. 

“It’s exhilarating to learn a play the place all people is being so terrible and rude and uncensored and truthful and nasty to one another,” says the actor, who once played a young Han Solo, but is now making his Broadway debut in Becky Shaw. Of his character Max, Ehrenreich says “there’s quite a bit” of toxic traits, but that’s what makes doing the play so “darkly thrilling.”

Director Trip Cullman characterizes the play, a couple of dangerous date gone horribly mistaken, as a cringe comedy that is just like the sitcom The Comeback, saying, “This play has the same kind of like, ‘I can’t look, but I can’t look away.'”

Becky Shaw was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize when it first premiered in 2008. Watch the solid and playwright Gionfriddo focus on with Playbill’s Jeffrey Vizcaíno what it means to carry the play to audiences in 2026, and why it is for “lover girls” and “broke boys.”

Says Tony winner Lauren Patten: “I think the play kind of forces you to ask, does unconditional love exist? Can you really love somebody without manipulating them, without trying to maneuver to get what you want? I think people will walk away and take a cold hard look in the mirror.”