Review: Becky’s New Car at The Rep

By Taylor Jack Helmbolt

    Last Sunday, February 10th, a colleague and I ventured over to the Pittsburgh Playhouse on Point Park’s campus to see The Rep’s new rendition of Becky’s New Car by Steven Dietz. The matinee was located in the small, intimate studio theatre, and played to a sold-out house. This cozy little venue nicely complimented both the writing style of the play and the directorial choices of this particular production. In fact, the combination of venue, direction, and writing led me to notice a rather commonly occurring tendency in the construction of contemporary American plays. I believe that, under the umbrella of modern American Theatre, there is a specific brand of play that attempts to reach audiences by openly conversing with them. Through the use of direct actor-to-audience dialogue, these plays attempt to draw in audiences and connect them to the characters on a personal, friendly level. I use the term “dialogue” rather than “monologue” because, unlike more classical texts that utilize soliloquy to communicate motivation, inner monologue, or plot points to the audience, these plays actually attempt to start a conversation with the observers and even seem to encourage feedback. They do not simply monologue at the observers, but instead attempt to evoke a response, or perhaps a “mood” of verbal exchange. When successful, the audience members feel as if the keystone “conversational character” is a friend or acquaintance rather than a mere stranger. This dramatic tool can be very effective, and Becky’s New Car seems to be a perfect example of its integration into contemporary American playwriting. This particular production took this talkative attitude to the extreme in what, I believe, was an ultimately successful attempt at establishing amiable character-audience relationships.



    The play opens with a monologue from the namesake character of Becky. In the monologue, Becky addresses audience members directly as she welcomes them to her home -- one of several settings in the play. As the plot progresses, Becky continues to address the audience directly from time to time in order to touch in and reveal a piece of her inner monologue or experience. She lets the audience know what she’s feeling, sharing and expressing herself as one commonly does with a close friend. In this particular production, Becky also has an audience member move so that she can vacuum, has another spectator help her staple something for her work, and her husband Joe even offers someone a beer (with the warning that it might be a little “watery”). Overall, the fourth wall is practically non-existent. Or at the very least, it is a flimsy thing that can be removed by any character at a moment’s notice. In other words, the play was very casual and laid-back.

    While Becky’s New Car by Dietz is conversational in a very real sense, similar conventions can be found in other contemporary American plays. For example, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive utilizes a similar convention. The main character in that play, Lil’ Bit, speaks her inner thoughts to the audience with regularity. While the conventions of speaking “to” them and speaking “at” them create a somewhat different aesthetic, the commonplace use of this modern soliloquy is still noteworthy. Also, I’d like to draw some attention to the similarity with the usage of the voiceover in Tales of the Last Formicans by Constance Congdon. These dramatic tools help to both pull the audience into the world of the play -- the world the characters are experiencing -- and act as narration devices to help the plot flow along with ease. The Rep’s production, however, made use of the narrative convention in a refreshing and alluring manner when they embraced the loquacious qualities of Becky’s New Car. As an audience member, I felt as though I knew these people -- perhaps I was a family friend or houseguest -- and that feeling instantly engaged me in the world of the play and made me care about the characters. I was willing to go along for the ride as a passenger rather than a mere observer, and that made all the difference with regards to the successfulness of this particular production.

    That being said, the production was not without its flaws. Overall, it was charming and entertaining, and made for a wonderful Sunday matinee, but this charm did not come without  ample fluff and somewhat unearned situational drama. Jodi Gage as Becky offered a quaint and charming performance as Becky. Don’t get me wrong, she served the story very well and fit nicely into the aforementioned conversational convention, but the shininess of her delivery did not make up for the lackluster emotional life and the ease with which she seemed to both accept and cope with the radical life changes she was undergoing. To her credit, though, she did remain likable throughout, which can sometimes be a challenge when playing a character who decides to risk the security of her nuclear family, including her presumably faithful husband, Joe, in order to pursue selfish mid-life-crisis related desires.

    Overall, I enjoyed my evening with the Rep and their production of Becky’s New Car. I think this charming story is a surprisingly lighthearted (despite the potentially heavy content) and  pleasant piece of theatre that serves as a brief magazine clipping or snapshot of the lives of Americans in our day and age. I think that it lacks a bit of substance in regards to the writing, but since I believe that the ultimate purpose of a play like this is to entertain, I cannot say that it was unsuccessful in its mission. I think that the venue, though a bit small and claustrophobic, was nicely fitted to the story, and the design was simple yet effective. I think that more care could have been taken with regard to the homely refuse hanging amidst the lighting on the ceiling, and I think that the performances could have been tailored to the space a bit more thoroughly (several actors were too large, the rest too small), but I was pleased with the spirit of the production and the effectiveness of the storytelling. It was certainly nice to see the success of the actor-to-audience colloquial form of the play, which was well executed and appropriately spaced and timed. While I don’t see myself running out to the bookstore to buy my own copy any time soon, Becky’s New Car is a play that anyone interested in contemporary American theatre should see, if only once.

Taylor Jack Helmbolt is a senior musical theatre major at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama currently playing Melchior in Spring Awakening and taking Special Topics: Contemporary American Theatre.