Video: In Becky Shaw 'Everyone Is Awful,' But That's What Makes It a Fun Time

Gina Gionfriddo's comedy about modern relationships is running on Broadway.

March 23, 2026 By Diep Tran, Jeffrey Vizcaíno

It's great to play someone good, but sometimes, you just want to play someone bad. At least that's what Alden Ehrenreich says when discussing his latest project, Gina Gionfriddo's comedy Becky Shaw, currently running on Broadway.

“It’s exhilarating to read a play where everybody is being so awful and impolite and uncensored and truthful and nasty to each other," 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 a lot" of toxic traits, but that's what makes doing the play so "darkly thrilling."

Director Trip Cullman characterizes the play, about a bad date gone horribly wrong, as a cringe comedy that's similar to 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 cast and playwright Gionfriddo discuss with Playbill's Jeffrey Vizcaíno what it means to bring the play to audiences in 2026, and why it's 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.”