Becky Shaw, Almeida, London

Nervy: Daisy Haggard as Becky Shaw

Thackeray’s Becky Sharp is an astute little body, manipulative and on the make. Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw may be both those things, but one of the points of this sharp and sassy American comedy is that it is hard to tell. Is she genuinely needy or spinning a line? Whichever is true, she acts on the rest of the characters like paint-stripper, mercilessly exposing their snobberies and insecurities – and there are plenty to expose.

A fast-talking, sharp-shooting social comedy, Gionfriddo’s play focuses on one screwed-up family. When we first meet them, Father has recently died and Mother is consoling herself with a much younger man. Suzanna, their psychologist daughter, is “wallowing” in her grief – at least that is the view of Max, the adopted son of the family. A fabulously cynical character, he has buried his own emotional needs beneath a wise-cracking, tough-talking carapace – describing love, dismissively, as “a byproduct of use”. He doesn’t react favourably when Suzanna marries Andrew, a doe-eyed, sensitive type who likes to rescue vulnerable women and makes statements such as “she’s in a transitional life-space”.

Into this morass of half-truths and self-deception waltzes Becky, introduced as a blind date for Max. She arrives looking a fright: overdressed and gawky with nerves (a wonderfully enigmatic performance from Daisy Haggard). But soon she has her hooks into everyone, revealing the confused foundations of all their relationships.

It is an astute comedy, shifting the moral viewpoint as swiftly as Jonathan Fensom’s revolving set shifts location, so you are never sure who is using whom, or who is right. It speculates on self-knowledge, lying and the tactics we use to hide from pain. But though it is dazzlingly written and studded with rapier-sharp lines, there is a niggling sense that it doesn’t reveal as much as it purports. Like the characters, it boxes itself in.

That said, it is delivered with tremendous topspin by an excellent cast in Peter DuBois’s production. Vincent Montuel is infuriatingly sweet as Andrew, Anna Madeley touchingly confused as Suzanna and Haydn Gwynne splendidly waspish as her mother. But the performance of the evening comes from David Wilson Barnes as Max, delivering outrageous lines with the timing and accuracy of a marksman, yet making his character loveable. A lot of fun, but perhaps less food for thought than you might hope.

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