NEW YORK — "Becky Shaw," which opened Thursday at off-Broadway's Second Stage, is a sharp social comedy of articulate anger laced with large helpings of angst and ambition. The perfect nourishment for theatergoers starved for a dramatic conflagration or two.

The people in Gina Gionfriddo's rambunctious play about corrosive relationships are often unaware of the effect their words have on others. It turns into a theatrically volatile evening, producing fireworks that often explode with hilarious results.

"Becky Shaw" (the title comes from the play's most enigmatic character) deals with thirtysomethings trying to connect and having a hard time making the pieces fit. It was a critical and audience favorite last spring at Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. You can see why.

Gionfriddo's creations talk with a rat-tat-tat ferocity. Chief among these gabbers is Max, a successful, self-centered lawyer and financial adviser who says exactly what he thinks and hang the consequences. David Wilson Barnes, who originated the role in Kentucky, makes the man's irritating transparency surprisingly appealing.

But Max's forthrightness becomes a serious roadblock in his quest for a long-term relationship. It's something Suzanna (Emily Bergl) and her eager, well-meaning husband Andrew (Thomas Sadoski) want to rectify.

Max gets set up with Becky, one of life's also-rans. Or so she seems. The woman exudes pathetic but is it all an act? Annie Parisse's intriguing performance keeps you guessing as a woman whose determination allows her to keep plugging onward if not exactly upward.

Suzanna has her own issues, too, particularly with her mother, an acerbic widow with multiple sclerosis and a younger, if slightly disreputable boyfriend. Kelly Bishop is a delight as this steely matron whose practicality is severely tested by her family's rapidly disappearing fortune and the fact that her late husband may have been sleeping with his male business partner.

But then Suzanna's quasi-amorous relationship with Max (before the husband comes into the picture) is a little off-center, too. They are vaguely related, with Max being taken in as a young boy by Suzanna's parents after his mother died and his father disappeared.

Peter DuBois' brisk staging matches Gionfriddo's rapid-fire, often combative dialogue. These people are not exactly warm and cuddly, and their chilliness doesn't make you want to root for them to succeed. But the conversations, often peppered with slick cultural references, certainly are lively and the laughs flow freely.

Yet it says something about this highly verbal play that its most affecting moment occurs when nothing is said at all.