Review: ‘Becky’s New Car’ at Theatre 40 Takes Audiences on a Thoroughly Entertaining Ride

Becky’s New Car, the last show of Theatre 40’s 2024-25 season, is a revelatory and joyous journey where infidelity spawns out of hilarious misunderstandings and the thrill of something more, or different, en route to a destination characterized by twists, turns, and detours. And unless the play garners the massive attention it deserves overnight (which it should), it will go down as one of the more underrated productions in the last several years.

The words that playwright Steven Dietz affords the premise, and his characters, amount to a sharp, witty, and funny spectacle — and yet they’re also grounded in a raw sensibility that affects couples every day. Director Cate Caplin has taken Dietz’s verbiage and given them an extra dose of intention via her performers, fueled by a purposeful energy that infectiously envelops over two acts.

We meet protagonist Becky Foster (Jenn Robbins) as she’s vacuuming her living room; this is more than just a quotidian action, however. Becky readily acknowledges the audience in several intriguing fourth-wall-breaking moments, offering beverages, a roll of toilet paper, as well as asking assorted attendees to collate paper, zip/unzip her dress, and place a bucket near an apparent leak from the ceiling of her home. In short order, Becky also paints a picture about her psychology-majoring and basement-dwelling son Chris (Riley Introcaso), as well as roofer husband Joe (Grinnell Morris).

Within minutes, the setting flawlessly shifts to the Bill Buckley dealership where Becky works with the passionate but oftentimes dejected fellow salesman Steve who lost his wife Rita in a hiking accident; it was Rita, too, who told Becky the driving metaphor that “When a woman says she wants a new car, she wants a new life.” One evening, Becky is working late again to assist with her employer’s expansion just as a charmingly anxious multi-millionaire widower of billboards, Walter Flood (Christopher Franciosa), walks in after-hours and inquires about buying nine cars as gifts for his employees. When Becky accidentally refers to her husband in the past tense, Walter gets the wrong impression about her marital standing. Of course, this miscommunication is only reinforced when Walter commiserates with Becky about stubbornly holding onto the past. A professional interaction transforms into a personal longing, and Becky is soon rationalizing the grey areas she walks through to sneak around her spouse and attend a black-tie dinner at Walter’s estate.

Stage maestro Robbins, who is additionally an adjunct acting professor, inhabits Becky with a charismatic finesse and congenial presence that gets guests totally invested in her character. Sundry monologues, spliced with some ad-libbing, are delivered with a zestful immediacy that has us seriously contemplating if we could indeed condone the unscrupulousness of Becky’s unfaithfulness only to see what happens next; in fact, that’s exactly what happens when the audience is queried about what this wife, living a routine existence with a husband who is only nice and caring, should do — more than half raise their hand in agreement that she should attend Walter’s party. One must wonder what would transpire if the audience were in unanimous opposition — would the play unceremoniously end? Luckily, it keeps going, also paying off a plot device about a mysterious Mrs. Tipton who, upon suffering the departure of her husband to a swimwear model, curiously purchases a late-to-arrive desirable car seemingly as an act of rebellion.

Franciosa exudes heaps of personality with an oblivious, high-society, and borderline pedantic awkwardness that ingratiates Walter to both Becky and observers without hesitation. There’s an identification with Walter’s stressed-out reaction when he is asked about selecting the car trimmings, colors, and fabric upholstery — the endless choices can certainly be overwhelming. Moreover, as siloed as Walter is within the upper crust, he’s also properly genuine (misinformed as he is) in his empathetic responses to Robbins’s Becky, whom he refers to as “Rebecca,” and seems authentically surprised to discover ways of the world that are old hat to common folk; nonetheless, Walter’s characterizations resonate in good faith because of Franciosa’s incredibly conceived performance, which elicits breathless laughter throughout, none more acute than what transpires after a calculated cell phone swap with Morris’s Joe.

Joe adores his wife “Beck” — so much so that, as the spectator, it’s difficult to grant Becky the green light to pursue the double life of an extramarital affair. And as understanding as Joe is, he would rather hear the unvarnished truth from his wife than be white-lied to, assuming there was someone else capturing a romantic interest, whereas for Becky it would be the opposite. Where Morris particularly shines is as the justifiably reactive husband in Act II, not so much with anger, but with a straight-faced, stoic-colored concern that takes hold of the narrative and comically jibes terrifically with the fervor around him.

Combs is funny and heartfelt as the excitable Steve despite his persona’s brief descent into madness through a retelling of a story involving a boy, puppy, and steep cliff. Introcaso similarly elicits chuckles with his know-it-all Chris who loves running “alongside” his new girlfriend during crisp mornings, and has a retort for everything, reframing every exchange into a commentary on psychological terms and their definitions. Isabella DiBernardino is splendid as the early-20s Kenni, Walter’s perceptive and relatively practical daughter who has been lavished with lofts, which she doesn’t need, by her father. Lastly, Kristin Towers-Rowles is riotous as the “swooping” Ginger, a woman refreshingly self-aware about the loss of her trust-fund protections, who makes a sultrily short-lived case to be Walter’s next romantic partner.

While any technical crew is invaluable, the personnel in Becky’s New Car are especially essential to following the venue transitions in the story. Jeff G. Rack’s immaculately integrative set, inclusive of the Fosters’ pink-painted living room, to the olive-green walls at Buckley’s dealership, and an opulent stairwell platform at Walter’s mansion, are traveled to and fro seamlessly, accentuated by the lighting of Derrick McDaniel and sound design of Nick Foran who are veritably recognized during Becky’s narration sequences. Last, but not least, costume designer Michael Mullen as well as hair, wig, and makeup guru Judi Lewin deftly underscore the difference in lifestyle between blue and white-collar habits practiced by the likes of the Fosters and Floods.

Overall, there isn’t a play in town that will provoke not just laughs, but uncontrollable guffaws at the intensifying chaos that unfurls in Theatre 40’s stellar show — one that never loses its fresh car smell. A confluence of absurdly mistaken assumptions, banter, and bombshell discoveries co-exist adjacent to sincere people, affected by natural insecurities, with sometimes complex motivations but nonetheless pulled by a need for happiness and fulfillment. Farce, entirely on its own, falls flat when it is not underpinned and actualized by familiar archetypes of people. Becky’s New Car gracefully balances its themes, existing within the diverting realm of plausible deniability.

Cover image caption: Left to right are Jenn Robbins and John Combs in Theatre 40’s production of Becky’s New Car in Beverly Hills, CA. Photo by Gabe Tejeda.

Theatre 40’s production of Becky’s New Car runs through Sunday, June 15th. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit theatre40.org.