KNOW Theatre is starting 2024 with Becky Shaw, a black comedy about a blind date that goes alarmingly off the rails.
The play by Gina Gionfriddo premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2008 to positive reviews. An Off-Broadway run in New York followed, and the play was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
“Gina Gionfriddo’s comedy of bad manners, a tangled tale of love, sex and ethics among a quartet of men and women in their thirties, is as engrossing as it is ferociously funny, like a big box of fireworks fizzing and cracking across the stage from its first moments to its last,” the New York Times reviewer wrote when the play opened Off-Broadway.
The KNOW production will open Feb. 9 and run weekends through Feb. 25 at KNOW Theatre in Binghamton.
Samantha Rose is directing the production. A graduate of Binghamton University, Rose previously directed How I Learned to Drive at KNOW Theatre. Cast members are Jeff Tagliaferro, Anna Tagliaferro, Lynette Daniels, Amelia Pena and Josh Schull. All have previously acted in local and regional productions.
“When an evening calculated to bring happiness takes a dark turn, crisis and comedy ensue in this wickedly funny play that asks what we owe the people we love and the strangers who land on our doorstep,” KNOW’s programs notes state.
IF YOU GO: KNOW Theatre will present Becky Shaw Feb. 9-25 at KNOW Theatre, 74 Carroll St., Binghamton. Performances are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets at $25 (seniors, $20; students, $15) can be ordered through KNOW’s website, www.knowtheatre.org. There is a pay-what-you can performance at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15.
–George Basler
