A fascinating story of people with deep problems working out problems

The Bible warns God threatens to place "the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."
After seeing Gina Gionfriddo's "Becky Shaw," maybe that should be expanded to fathers and mothers.
For the central characters, fathers and mothers have cursed their lives.
It's all depressing, with some strong performances to enhance this tale of transition from one generation to the next.

The two principal characters are Susanna (Amanda Funiciello) and Max (Rick Lattimer), who were raised together by her parents after he was pried loose from his widowed, jailbird father.
Max turns into a stereotype of a familial money manager, trying to deal with Susan, Susanna's mother (Tammy Hayes McGovern), who refuses to believe her newly dead husband used up the family money, which she and her current man need to live in the style to which they are accustomed.
Susanna is a psychology grad student at Brown, living in Providence.
She has a thing with Max which once goes a lot further.
Her father's death triggers the avalanche of misery the playwright has concocted.
A depressed Susanna goes skiing and comes back to a quick marriage to an office manager, Andrew (Anthony J. Grande), a wedding disapproved of by her mother and by Max.
Andrew has an office worker with problems and makes the mistake of believing she's a good match for Max.
That's Becky Shaw (Stefanie Warnick).

Andrew doesn't realize the depths of Becky's problems until after things go wrong.
Leaving a restaurant, Max and Becky are held up by a man with a gun and Max tries to persuade him to go away by giving him cash from his car, along with a camera, along with both their wallets.
This reaches into Becky's personal sexual history and without common sense Andrew tries to help.
After leaving Susanna in their apartment, Andrew almost succumbs to Becky's proposition.
Max doesn't realize why Becky is handling it all so badly, partly his blatant male chauvinism and partly his cluelessness about women.
There's a trade among the men and women to settle all of the tensions.

Crazily enough, there is a fascinating story here of people with deep problems working out problems, not all that well but there is the effort.

Lattimer makes the plot work because Max is such an awful human being, claiming he's just trying to do his work and move up in his company's hierarchy.
Every time other characters start to make things calmer, Max intervenes and things heat up.
Warnick's Becky is different because she has seemingly gone out of her way to make things worse for herself.
It's a strong performance.
Susan is a parody of a clueless rich person, going through life with a cane and her MS and her superiority complex.
Susanna wants to save the world and that's why she's in grad school, while dealing with Max and Susan and the patients she is working with.

It's an interesting look at one small clutch of people, with director Chris J. Handley keeping it all moving, particularly with quick and smooth scene changes.
Tania Barrenechra contributed the set design, vast swaths of what is clearly supposed to be rich house wood paneling, emphasizing the money at the root of almost everyone's problems.

"Becky Shaw" is fascinating and well done and a look at people you don't want in your house under any circumstances