2025 Press
"In a waiting area, a woman (Becca Westbrook) sat in near complete stillness before a coffin as audience members arrived and hovered, unsure of their next steps. This figure – who may or may not have been The Winter’s Tale's Paulina – did not ignore the audience, but rather met and held people’s gaze, occasionally gesturing in acknowledgement but giving nothing else away. She, and we, were waiting for something, had perhaps been waiting for a long time. Fifteen years, perhaps."
"On occasion, you’ll have the chance to catch some up-and-coming stars of the stage who come on as understudies. Taking the place of Raven Lorraine, on the night I was there, Becca Westbrook proved exuberantly audacious as Dromio of Ephesus, the servant of the philandering Antipholus twin, who like the boss is married (as Dromio of Syracuse discovers by accident, much to his shock). The penchant for slapstick is strong in her, and she’ll keep you in stitches, when she’s not dodging the wrath of both Antipholi (I swear that’s a word)."
"Just as the Academy froths at the mouth whenever anyone makes a movie about movies, I have been so excited to review Becca Westbrook’s production of Amelia P. Rosselli’s Anima, or Her Soul, because, at its core, it is a play about reviewing and judgment, of art, yes, but also of character. . .Westbrook’s direction focused on something I admittedly am a novice in: devising. Olga’s paintings were more than just what fueled her soul, they were also the main vocabulary for the staging. Characters stood behind empty picture frames, posing as if for a portrait, and would only move when their character was set to enter."
"The consistently heightened poetic register (with occasional descents into prosaic slapstick and dick jokes, especially as Feste (Westbrook) drew out a tape measure with which to pee) was a source of constant delight, balancing complex puns with sudden flashes of emotional clarity."
2024 Press
"Casting Becca Westbrook as the play’s Usher began this process in disarming style; Westbrook, in addition to being an outstanding actor, is also one of the American Shakespeare Center’s regular front-of-house greeters, and she brought that professionally delighted-to-see-you energy to her role here, welcoming everyone to the theatre with beaming smile. But as her opening announcements went on, they became increasingly uncomfortable, her smile unwavering as she fixated on individual audience members with promises of the attention that would follow in the event of sweet wrappers being rustled, cellphone being checked, or coughs being coughed. Raising for me memories of Kirsty Sedgman’s work on audience etiquette and theatrical policing, the reading demanded that the audience become painfully aware of its own embodiment, with every shuffle, every sign of our corporeal existence, potentially opening us up to that oh-so-nice-and-caring-it’s-for-your-own-good laser-sharp scrutiny."
"The Forest of Arden is many things to many people: a place of work, a place to waste one’s time, a place of fear. But for Megan Parlett and Becca Westbrook’s production starring the MBU Shakespeare & Performance first years, it was more than anything else a place of refuge and community. By reimagining the sprawling pastoral Forest of Shakespeare as a queer-friendly bar in 90s America, the production reversed the usual movement from court to country and instead found liberation in the confined walls of a single small sanctuary from the outside world, whose inhabitants rubbed shoulders closely with one another and were able to, as the song told us, express themselves."
"Westbrook in many ways had the most important storytelling task of the production, with Emilia becoming the audience avatar for the unreasonableness of what Palamon, Arcite, and Theseus were all asking of her. Her horror at being asked to choose which man she would marry and which would die was undisguised, especially as the production had strongly implied that neither would have been her preferred answer, had it not been given to her to save one of them. Hippolyta, in a beautifully kind performance by Frishman, saw Emilia’s struggle and shared in her sadness, but the solidarity between the two didn’t give Emilia an answer. Boldly following the play’s own choices concerning spectacle, the climactic battle between Arcite and Palamon was left offstage, the production understanding that Emilia’s response to the shifting fortunes of the battle was the true story. While Westbrook indulged in some comedy as she showed her miniatures of her two suitors to audience members in the gallant stools, her achievement here was keeping the stakes of the otherwise very silly comedy of Palamon and Arcite visible, and her choice impossible."
Come To The Pedlar | THEATRE: Pride and Prejudice by Emma Whipday (American Shakespeare Center)
"And while super-substitute Becca Westbrook, understudying as Mary, repeatedly stole the show with pitch-perfect moralizing (“Oh do hush, Mary!”), fumblings with curtains, and other social awkwardness, her most hilarious moment – in which she belted out an overlong and disproportionately confident solo, interrupting the Bingleys’ ball – was followed by the upsetting sight of her realizing her humiliation and running offstage. Again and again;, this adaptation and this production demanded that its characters engage with others’ perspectives."
"Clyomon’s roguery melted away in his conflict with King Thrasellus (Becca Westbrook), a classic wrestling heel who got some great blows in on Clyomon but was then killed with a single blow while vaunting"
2023 Press
"the sudden latching on to the idea of Christmas brought her back to centre-stage and to Iona (Westbrook), who offered a hilariously grounded counterpoint. Iona’s wide-eyed disbelief at her mistress’s barely concealed incriminating remarks placed her in an impossible situation, and she desperately decorated the tree (and audience members on the gallant stools) in her own attempt to distract herself from the inevitable. The two women’s collaboration on an evocation of normalcy, while funny, also had a kick to it, though.