Employing satire, absurdism, and irony, Craig Lucas's Reckless explores a number of universal aspects of human experience by depicting them in the extreme. One of the most pronounced themes is identity. The story explores how identity can shift. Throughout the play, characters misrepresent themselves, using false names and fabricated personal histories. In the semi-surreal world of the play, identity is continually constructed and reconstructed.

We meet the protagonist as Rachel in scene 1. By scene 3, Rachel introduces herself as Mary Ellen Sissle and rewrites her history on the spot. Throughout the course of the play, Rachel reinvents herself time and time again and assumes multiple identities with various concocted backstories. But her reimagined identities are inconsistent. She backtracks on her autobiographical claims and does little to acknowledge or effectively explain the conflicts. For example, when Lloyd, a stranger who picks Rachel up at a gas station after her husband attempts to murder her, asks if she is married, she emphatically denies it. She even throws her wedding ring out the window without hesitation, claiming it is a costume. Within a few lines, she admits that she has children and has been married. "My husband has custody," she says, failing to call him her ex-husband, without acknowledging the contradiction.

Interwoven throughout invented identities are scraps of truth. The audience is left to wonder which aspects of Rachel are artificial. Is the ring truly a costume? Does she really have sons? The former turns out to be false and the later true. However, the audience has no way of knowing it at the time. Reality is too intermingled with misrepresentation to tell the difference.

Strikingly, characters rarely question glaring inconsistencies in each others' professed identities. We quickly learn that this is because almost everyone within the exaggerated world of the play is regularly assuming a new self. The woman living with Lloyd, Pooty, has been faking deafness and paralysis. Lloyd changed his name and left his family after drinking too much, severely injuring his son, and stealing his children’s college fund. It's not just the protagonist who is prone to the fantastical. Lloyd and Rachel are living invented lives in tandem. So they skirt around the issue of truly knowing someone, unaware that the other has changed their identity as well.

Rachel: Do you think we ever really know people? I mean, I know we know people . . .

Lloyd: You mean really.

Rachel: But really.

Lloyd: But know them.

Rachel: Do you think?

Lloyd: Well . . . I don't know.

Rachel: I don't know either. I mean, I suppose I know lots of people.

Lloyd: Sure you do.

In this passage from scene 3, both Rachel and Lloyd seem to be trying to figure out if the other person suspects that they are being misled. But they also seem to be trying to figure out if they themselves are even knowable now that they have assumed a new persona. The interaction speaks to the broader theme of identity: Who am I? Who are you? Can we ever truly know one another?

Lloyd continues to wrestle with the question. He feels the need to justify the adoption of his new identity once he suspects Rachel has heard about it. He appears to feel guilty about what he has done to his family—abandoning them, injuring his son, and taking his children's college fund before reinventing himself. But Rachel doesn't see the problem. She seems to have abandoned her conflicted feelings entirely. After Lloyd confesses in scene 10, they have the following exchange:

Rachel: Well, these things happen for a reason....