Sharp Claws at “Becky Shaw” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”

But the engine driving the production is Ehrenreich’s magnetic performance as Max, the sort of character who, in many other stories and lots of nineteen-eighties sex comedies, would be the villain. With his subdued growl, rat-a-tat standup-comic delivery, and air of couched melancholy, Ehrenreich lends a peculiar moral weight to Max, a master puppeteer tangled up in his own strings. He’s a caustic know-it-all, but, the more we learn about him, the more defensible, and even ethical, his Realpolitik becomes. However callous his words are, he radiates turbulent emotion: whenever someone steps close to him, a Geiger counter starts crackling, as if intimacy itself had a half-life.