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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > June > 21 > Entry
Review: ‘Becky’s New Car’
Becky Foster has hit a rut along life’s highway when we meet her — vaccuum cleaner in hand — at the start of Steven Dietz’s comedy “Becky’s New Car,” now getting a deftly staged production at Zach Theatre.
It’s not that life is going so badly for Becky (Lauren Lane). Her good-natured roofer husband. Joe (Chris Gibson), is still loving after 28 years of marriage even if he hasn’t gotten around to fixing their own roof. Chris, Becky’s 26-year-old son (a kinetic Josh Meyer) is a perpetual psychology graduate school still living at home and spouting psychobabble about every family interaction. And Becky’s deadend desk job at a car dealership demands far too much and give far too little.
But when the wealthy, lonesome yet bumbling widower Walter Flood (Lucien Douglas, at pitch-perfect deadpan) shows up at the showroom to buy nine new cars for his employers, Becky is just malcontent enough to let him believe that she is available and that she, too, just lost a spouse.
Dietz — who teaches playwriting at the University of Texas — stakes his entire snappy contemporary comedy on this all-too-familiar comedic device of misunderstanding. But if Dietz doesn’t strike out along any adventurous theatrical territory with “Becky’s New Car,” he does take the audience on a smooth, clever ride down a familiar comedic road. (That familiarity explains why Dietz’s considerable roster of plays are some of the most frequently produced by regional theaters.)
Directed by Dietz, the Zach production sparkles thanks in no small part to a cast with whip-smart comedic timing who manage the ever-escalating farcical action with charm and sincerity even if the script doesn’t deeply develop their characters.
As Becky, Lane (former star of the sit-com “The Nanny” and now teaching acting at Texas State University) projects just the right combination middle-aged, middle American ennui and likeable spunk even though that gets Becky’s life in a jumble.
Dietz toys with the nature of the theater’s “fourth wall,” at times, and has Becky engaging directly with the audience, offering them beverages, asking for help with her desk work. But that sometime feels a little hokey. And though Dietz knows how to deliver the punch lines, the plot feels as predictable as finding a pothole on an urban street.
Still, Becky and her midlife crisis grows on us and we want to stick around to see what happens to her even if we can already guess which road she’ll take.
‘Becky’s New Car’ continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through July 11 at Zach Theatre. www.zachtheater.org
Comments
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By Scott
June 25, 2010 7:00 AM | Link to this
I saw the play and thought it was wonderful. So did my companion. It is tremendously acted, very very funny and heart warming. The engagement of the audience only adds to the intimacy of the theatre and the fun in the show. This is a play that I would take all my neighbors to, my family, and would highly recommend to others.
Scott
By dianaP
June 21, 2010 5:53 PM | Link to this
I think it’s important to add that it’s hard to truly like and enjoy seeing “Becky’s New Car” when the characters are underdeveloped, and where every possible “learning moment” or epiphany of Becky’s is robbed from her by the domineering men in her life. Her character is not allowed to develop. Is this a by-product of the script, or part of its intention?
I think what Dietz has written as something of a comedic farce is in fact very dark. As a female 50-something who experienced a sense of renewal and freedom from the Women’s Movement of the 60’s and 70’s, “Becky’s New Car” leaves me with anger and bitterness at the cultural acceptance (laughter from audience?) at the domination and glib suppression of women.
I haven’t seen this mentioned in any reviews. I’d be interested to hear what other people thought.