The Pushover ★★★

The Pushover at Chain Theatre has the bones of a classic John Patrick Shanley pile-up of confrontations, but not quite the dramatic muscle to sustain them. Shanley, whose work often thrives on moral ambiguity and emotional volatility, offers here a compact drama that features three rich roles for women and flashes of his trademark verbal wit but ultimately struggles to cohere.

The play unfolds across two primary settings: an upscale spa in New Mexico and a barebones Asian restaurant in Queens. To reveal how the play goes from one unlikely spot to the other would spoil Shanley’s fun, twisty plot, but suffice it to say all the goodies are here: romance, violence, and even a pink gun. A framing device — sessions between Pearl and her therapist (a notably underwritten Christopher Sutton) — bookends the action, but rather than grounding the story, these scenes feel awkwardly imposed, as if they wandered in from another play and refused to leave. They also introduce a tonal inconsistency: the neurotic, self-aware Pearl we meet in therapy doesn’t quite align with the version of her that emerges later in the play, a disconnect that seems rooted in the writing rather than in performance.

That’s unfortunate, because Di Zhu is excellent in the role, bringing both comic precision and emotional nuance to Pearl. She’s aided by Shanley’s gift for dialogue. There are zingers for her and everyone throughout, including an early gem: “I have a weakness for strength.” Rebecca De Mornay, who first made her mark playing dangerously magnetic women in Risky Business and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, continues that lineage here with a bold, commanding presence as Evelyn, a mystery woman of means; and Christina Toth, as Soochi, proves a deft comic foil, landing her moments with aplomb and, late in the show, with a fantastically insane wig (courtesy of designer Bobbie Zlotnik).

Yet for all its appealing performances and sharp lines, The Pushover keeps the audience at a remove. Shanley offers glimpses into who these characters are and why they behave as they do, but stops short of fully developing those insights. We come close to understanding them — close enough to want more — but not close enough to feel fully invested. The result is a play that gestures toward depth without quite achieving it.

Director Kirk Gostkowski keeps the energy buoyant, particularly in the central action, though the structural issues — especially the transitions into and out of the therapist’s office — prove harder to overcome. Those problems ultimately stem from the script itself, which feels unevenly constructed and, despite its short duration, has too much repetition in its last third.

Shanley has set a high bar for himself with works like Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award, and Doubt, which earned him a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Here, he again reaches toward moral complexity, suggesting that even the most flawed individuals may possess some measure of goodness. It’s a provocative idea and one worth exploring. But where Doubt built to a final line that reframed everything that came before, The Pushover attempts a similar maneuver without the same foundation. The ending gestures at revelation, but the play hasn’t earned it, at least not yet.