Surprisingly Bad for You: A Review of John Patrick Shanley's Tasty, Toxic 'The Pushover'
The play, about an overpowering love affair between polar-opposite women, stars Rebecca De Mornay as an instantly iconic gangster girl of a certain RAGE
April 3, 2026
When Rebecca De Mornay first appears onstage at the Chain Theatre several minutes into John Patrick Shanley’s The Pushover, you can be forgiven for wondering if the dramatic framing of her arctic beauty signals that she might be put to use as an untouchable goddess. After all, Evelyn is conjured as a dangerous memory of her ex-lover Pearl (Di Zhu) at the end of a bumpy therapy session.
But while she looks like a French film star, the all-American film star is not playing aloof — not by a long shot. Once the proceedings move to a spa in New Mexico that her character owns, where she is effortlessly scaring the hell out of embezzler Soochie (Christina Toth) Pearl has sent her for some rough justice, it becomes clear Evelyn is an all-time great Shanley creation, a creatively vulgar, hectoring feline felon who relishes a put-down as much as she loves the power she exudes.
Watching her chew up and spit out the young woman she is supposed to murder (and does not, at least not physically) feels like watching a lion devouring a Christian — and rooting for the lion.
Whether “degenerate slut” or “egg-laying centipede,” the insults fly as Evelyn makes a point of degrading her prey, and we get the feeling all of this has nothing to do with the terrified “fish stick,” and everything to do with Evelyn’s complex relationship with Pearl.
Excluding a brief reprise of Pearl’s therapy session, the rest of the play is a verbal title fight dominated by Pearl and Evelyn, with hapless Soochie mostly cock-blocking their Mamet-like relationship drama.
As hysterically defensive — and offensive — as Evelyn is and as hopelessly hopeful as Pearl is, the women’s performances lend the characters surprisingly depth. In particular, De Mornay’s Evelyn reveals cracks in her facade, swinging from bad-ass to doomed romantic. Her character arc sneaks up on you, perhaps because Evelyn is fighting herself so hard.
In Shanley’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Moonstruck, Cher’s character famously demands that Nicolas Cage’s “snap out of it!” Here, Evelyn is demanding the same thing of herself. She doesn’t want the love of her life to work out, recoiling from the fear of feeling … well, anything.
I’ve always liked De Mornay’s work, which so often elevates the movies built around her. But here, she steps into a challenging piece and the most delicious character of her career and instead of having to be better than the play fully lives up to it. It’s easily her best material since The Trip to Bountiful, and it is a thrill watching her shred the audience’s expectations of what’s coming next from Evelyn.
Zhu is uniformly excellent, particularly when sparring with Evelyn over the demeaning nickname by which she’s known, a racist moniker she not only endures but embraces as the name of her start-up restaurant.
My only criticism of The Pushover — an otherwise tight 90 — is that the play would work just as well without its bookend therapy scenes; the relationship between Pearl and Evelyn needs no introduction and no denouement. It works best to watch it pulsating in real time.
The Pushover is an absolute riot, with emotional afterburn.