Profile for MemorableUserName

east side story said: "I wondered how long it would take before someone said the “T” word, which is more applicable to the folks bemoaning Rudin’s continued success. Have a great weekend, though!"

You've spent today mocking people in two different threads for having principles. Who knew that not wanting one's money to support a bad person was worthy of such derision? Or is it simply the fact that they're saying so?

There was much discussion in the previews thread about the time this revival is set in (crucially, while the last few revivals specified the 1940s in the Playbill, this one does not). I liked this bit in Holdren's review:

https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-lane-metcalf-death-of-a-salesman.html

"The dirt scattered across Mantello’s stage is both garden and grave: It’s Willy’s tiny plot of land, where he’s hoped to grow carrots and peas and big, heroic American men, and where he’ll end up being buried. Atop it sits another super-significant object, one that’s even on the posters outside — the salesman’s car, symbol of mobility, forward and upward. The vehicle blinds us with its headlights as it pulls slowly into the playing space, and its shrouded interior allows for the appearance and disappearance of actors as if in a magician’s puff of smoke. Crucially, it’s not the Studebaker Willy really drives in his late middle age, but the red Chevy he used to own, a dream car for a dream play. At least, that’s the implication — maybe, as this deep dive points out, it’s a Ford, seemingly from the ’60s, not the ’40s, but such anachronism feels in keeping with the production’s slippery approach to time: Willy’s odious boss Howard, played with toxic smarm by John Drea, looks like a contemporary tech bro. He’s a messenger from a future of maximized efficiency and shareholder value, complete with thermal vest and Starbucks-style to-go cup."

inception said: "So strange that someonesays "super annoying British YouTube vlogger" and she immediately assumes they're speaking about her?

Oh, please. At least stand by your original post instead of trying to gaslight people. The discussion in posts #89, 90, 91, and 92 was specifically about a specific British Youtube vlogger's review. Then you jump in at post 93 proposing an episode of Elsbeth where a British YouTube vlogger is murdered by the Broadway community for being annoying...but it's strange that anyone would assume you were talking about the British YouTube vlogger who was being discussed in the previous four posts?

jbm2 said: "Has Becky Shaw been on TDF at all?"

Yes, it was several times during previews.

Genuinely curious...is anyone surprised it got raves? Wasn't this expected after the raves for the 2024 production?

For comparison, the PAC reviews (which BWW calculated to 85%)

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Review-Roundup-CATS-THE-JELLICLE-BALL-Opens-Off-Broadway-20240620

A- from Entertainment Weekly

Becky Shaw review: Alden Ehrenreich steals the show in biting comedy about a blind date gone wrong

Two halves of a rocky marriage host a blind date, and everyone's life spirals in the aftermath.

https://ew.com/becky-shaw-review-broadway-alden-ehrenreich-steals-the-show-11943173

"When the laughter fades and you've wiped your hands of these utterly unlikable characters, all the upsetting questions they pondered remain. Becky Shaw touches something tender and doesn't stop there. Like its namesake's devious smile, it lingers. Grade: A–"

Three stars from the Guardian

Becky Shaw review – Alden Ehrenreich shines in dysfunctional dating comedy

Hayes Theater, New York
Ehrenreich is electric alongside The Pitt’s Patrick Ball in this very 2008 send-up of fallout from one disastrous blind date

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/apr/06/becky-shaw-broadway-review

"That the show can’t sustain this charge through its erratic second act is more a book issue than performance. The aftermath of Becky and Max’s (unseen) date are downstream conversations between characters that reveal the lopsidedness of their constitutions. Ironically, the play’s namesake, played by Brewer with shades of wild desperation, feels the least grounded: a plot device dressed up as a confection whose big reveal – let’s say a complicated history with Black men – feels both dated and contrived, the bite of Halloween teeth where there could be fangs. Max, the most transparently slimy one of the group, is also the most convincing. Ehrenreich is so good at playing this type of obviously overcompensating, moneyed cad (please see Chloe Domont’s 2023 film Fair Play), so good at contemptuously delivering the line “that woman” in a way that sends chills down your spine, that I missed anytime he was offstage.'

NY Daily News

BROADWAY REVIEW: ‘Becky Shaw’ eviscerates needy people and the people who need them

https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/04/06/becky-shaw-broadway-review/

"It’s a measure of the quality of Ehrenreich’s superb performance in what is generally an admirably straightforward production that he never tries to make his character more likable than Gionfriddo writes him, yet he lays all these bon mots with a palpable vulnerability. He understands that Max is operating on two tracks at once, spitting out the tough lessons partly as his philosophy of life but also as a way of avoiding the intensity of his own feelings. Gionfriddo intends him to grow on the audience as the play progresses, and so he does."

Deadline

‘Becky Shaw’ Broadway Review: A Blind Date Goes Crazy Bad In Enthralling Dark Comedy With Alden Ehrenreich & Patrick Ball

https://deadline.com/2026/04/becky-shaw-broadway-review-1236780120/

"Seventeen years after being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Gina Gionfriddo’s dark, sometimes giddy comedy Becky Shaw finally arrives on Broadway, and noting that it was worth the wait is an understatement none of its brutally honest anti-heroes would make. And if the nearly two-decades-in-the-making arrival meant we had to wait for this excellent cast to come together, all the better."

Holdren in Vulture

You Might Cut Yourself on Becky Shaw

Led by a superb Alden Ehrenreich, Gina Gionfriddo’s deliciously barbed games of money, sex, and power return to the stage.

https://www.vulture.com/article/becky-shaw-broadway-play-review.html

"While Becky is the catalyst for the play’s chain reaction — and Brewer nimbly inhabits the charged space between exploited and exploiter — it’s the seemingly impenetrable Max who is at last cracked open. Ehrenreich is superb in the role, as unafraid to be horrid as he eventually is to be broken. In a quintet of fine performances, his stands out in this moment so removed from when Becky Shaw debuted (2008 was not bursting at the seams with essays on our crisis of masculinity). “You are a rich man who puts his family in a two-star hotel,” Susan snaps at Max. “That’s what you are.” That may be part of what he is, but Ehrenreich makes clear that the miserable truth of Max is that he’s not really a man at all. He’s a boy who’s been taught that power will save him."

NYT Critic's Pick from Collins-Hughes

‘Becky Shaw’ Review: Funny vs. Likable? Funny Wins.

Alden Ehrenreich makes a show-stealing Broadway debut in Gina Gionfriddo’s comedy about two old friends, one disastrous blind date and the dicey aftermath.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/theater/becky-shaw-review-alden-ehrenreich.html

"The play has aged fittingly for where we find ourselves, amid a resurgence of the retro male-female gender dynamics that Gionfriddo’s plays hold up to the light. There are reasons that “Becky Shaw” feels alive right now."

Owen22 said: ". Alden was almost as good as the original (now deceased)guy who played Max (can't remember his name, but he seemed so essential to theplay).

David Wilson Barnes (RIP)

It was toward the end of Act One,

.

My Death of a Salesman seat was Left Mezz B51 or so. Stage right was slightly obstructed (could see enough to tell when (spoiler) was standing on top of the car,  but couldn't actually see more than an arm and a leg), but the view is decent otherwise. The four or five seats to the left of that should be avoided though.

Rudin had 6 in 2016

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/scott-rudin-23801#Awards

 

IBDB says Parker and Stone produced it through their company Important Musicals LLC, so they did get the Tony for Musical.

Holdren's review in Vulture is a good read as always, though, as someone who found it to be one of those shows that's perfectly entertaining without actually being good, I feel like she's being very generous.

Did Dog Day Afternoon Get Away With It?

https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-dog-day-afternoon-broadway-bernthal-guirgis.html

"Bring too much of that hyperspecific tone along with you to the August Wilson Theatre, and comparison may indeed prove the thief of joy. But let Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play introduce itself on its own terms, with its firm, enthusiastic handshake and garrulous demeanor (Guirgis has never been a playwright of few words), and the experience quickly endears itself. This time around, under Rupert Goold’s actor-forward direction and with Guirgis’s distinctive voiciness, the story has more in common with the canine of its title — there’s a little more swagger, sweetness, and slobber, a little more desire to please. But please, and move, it does, largely on account of its good heart."