Becky Shaw A 35-year-old temp worker with a history of cutting herself, Becky Shaw can boast an above-average fuckedupedness quotient, but then so can everyone else in Gina Gionfriddo’s 2009 play. Max, for instance, presents as an acerbic, hyperrational banker when he’s really a hot mess inside. His pseudo stepsister, Suzanna, can’t take responsibility for herself. Suzanna’s new husband, Andrew, is a sucker for a lady in distress. Only Suzanna’s mom, Suzanne, has come to terms with life—if merely by recognizing that, while money can’t buy love, it can at least secure a warm body at night. You can sense the savagery implicit in the situation when Becky gets dropped into this group via a blind date. Yet, fresh off directing the silly jukebox musical Rock of Ages, Scott Weinstein seems to opt for Restoration over black comedy, pushing a highly competent cast toward meaninglessly mannered caricature. —Tony Adler
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot Eclectic Full Contact Theatre presents Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play, which imagines Judas Iscariot’s trial in purgatory as a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure-style parade of celebrity historical witnesses testifying to Christ’s betrayer’s guilt and innocence. The clash of dialects and styles of speech is jarring, and this mishmash of comedy and drama rarely rings true. Amber Sallis (as a street Saint Monica) and Michael Woods (as a lounge-lizard Satan) have standout moments, but for the most part one is reminded that whatever the road to hell is paved with, it’s still the road to hell. David Belew directed. —Dmitry Samarov
The Worst of All/La Peor de Todas Venezuelan writer Iraida Tapia’s stage biography of the 17th-century scholar and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, being produced here by New York-based Water People Theater at the National Museum of Mexican Art as part of the first Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, is very much a play about language. This is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness: it is all talk and very little action. The play is at times visually arresting, thanks to Raquel Rios’s costumes and Juan Jose Martín’s quirky scenic designs, but it’s also essentially static, staged by Martín as a series of tableaux that emphasize Tapia’s (and Sor Juana’s) words. Still, the show features some strong acting. Rebeca Alemán, in particular, reveals the pathos in Sor Juana’s life without making her story sentimental. The play is performed in Spanish with English supertitles. —Jack Helbig
