Becky's New Car

Ladies who are feeling a bit jaded in their relationships or love lives will warm to the soft growl of Steven Dietz's gentle allegory on mid-life crisis in Becky's New Car (2008), now moving into the pole position at the Bay Theatre Company (to 1/8/12). Guys: when your spouse or significant other asks for a fast car, you better monitor the keys.

After a lifetime of nurturing on the home front - tied to a plodding but good-hearted Joe of a husband (Jim Reiter) and an aimless career-student son Chris (a delightfully animated and analytic Davis Chandler Hasty) - and endless enabling in the workplace, with a philandering (and absent) car dealer and a downer of a salesman (played with exquisite neediness by Nigel Reed), Becky Foster (the engaging Janet Luby) is ripe to cut loose. Enter a very wealthy billboard owner (don't laugh, this is exactly how Ted Turner got his start) named Walter Flood (given a whimsical turn by Jim Chance) who's looking to buy a cluster of vehicles, and our heroine is just about ready to take a test drive on a new life. But it comes with strings - a new social order and class of people. Becky seems as perplexed as the rest of us over the slippery slope she's been thrust down by fate, but wins you over quickly.

How to get audience buy-in for the impending fiasco? Why bring them into the show! For those lucky (or unlucky) ones who sit front and center and raise their hands, this will be one memorable performance. But the meta-fictional moments, where the characters address the patrons, smooth over any rough edges and before too long the fictional and real worlds become blurred as the audience starts to sound like the Amen Chorus. To Becky's question of what she should do, their response is: Go For It!

Under Jim Gallagher's direction the tone is conversational and the movement polished, seamlessly breezing along, grounded in the characterization, or arranged as suggestive tableaux. The pace accelerates in the second half, after a leisurely set-up, as Becky's secret life threatens to unfold.

The ensemble casting is uniformly strong, with supporting actors grabbing as much of the limelight their egocentric characters can wrest from their betters. Kooky characters abound and they just get kookier in Act II with the introduction of Walter's entitled daughter Kenni (Elena Crall), on her way up, and ex-girlfriend Ginger (Alicia Sweeney), on her way down. Both later hook up with partners suitable to their enlightened stations. The rich are comically sent up for all they are worth, as Mr. Chance's deft handling of the clueless Walter and Ms. Sweeney's deliciously withering assessments as Ginger will attest. The script is stuffed with other good lines and situations (especially with Messrs. Hasty and Chance's characters) and the actors' timing brings in the many laughs. Leading the charge, though, is Mr. Reed as Steve the wussy car salesman and mournful widower who is stuck on a mountain (he'll be up there again, it seems, with his new flame).

The play reads like a situational comedy made from whole cloth. But it plays like a farce (with many mistakes, mix-ups, misdirections) where the quick shifts between locations (living room, car dealership, Walter's estate) evoked by split staging, serve the place of slamming doors. Ken Sheats' scenic design favors the prosaic lives expressed in the Fosters' particle board furniture, with a color palette loaded in brown. Andy Serb playfully dials up the mood at the start and close of the Acts (look for some telling song titles before the intermission) and costumer Christina McAlpine fits everyone to perfection. Eric Lund's lighting tracks the shifting scenes on cue. There's less separation between time and place than I would prefer - it seems anchored in Becky's living room, but then this could be taken as her fantasy.

By the play's imaginative close, there are a lot of loose ends to tie down, requiring not one, not two, but three resolutions. You might find your credulity strained, if not your attention, by so pat a conclusion, if you aren't fully engaged with the characters and laughing (like most of us in the audience). As Chris might say, if this play doesn't leave you BWL, you're suffering from seasonal affective disorder!

Moral of the story: The view might be better in a gated cove, but love the one you're with (apologies to Stephen Stills). Or: You have to leave home to find it again.

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Program notes: Excellent and to the point, with playwright bio, director note, actor head shots, and easy-to-read text

Sound check: Low sound levels throughout. Some loss of dialogue from elevated sound track at the top of Act II

Applause meter: The highly recommended side of recommended

Moment of play: Forgotten (or was it?) phone sequence at the end of Act I

Line of the play: Ginger "I don't hike, Steve" late in Act II

Stars of the play: 1) (tied) James Gallagher, director, & Steven Dietz, playwright, 2) Nigel Reed as Steve & Alicia Sweeney as Ginger, and 3) Christina McAlpine, costume designer

Audience reaction: Overwhelmingly positive

Runtime: 2:15/w intermission