Guilty as charged! “Beau Is Afraid,” three hours of bleak wonderment that feels, well, like three hours of bleak wonderment, Beau Wassermann awaits the start of his latest therapy session with a look that suggests a man awaiting his executioner. Played to the clammy hilt by Joaquin Phoenix, Beau speaks as if words came as easily as passing kidney stones, on the topic of how he’s feeling about going home to visit his manipulative mother, played by Broadway giant Patti LuPone.
The therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) listens, then writes one word in his notebook, just out of Beau’s eyeline: GUILT. He then dashes off a prescription for “a very cool new drug” that must be taken with water. Or else.
“Beau Is Afraid” swims in the fluids of guilt and humiliation, from front to back. Beau lives in a grubby apartment located in what looks like a nightmarish New York City, street crime running rampant, killers on the loose, trash and bad vibes everywhere.
