Chris Rock. Stephen Adly Guirgis. They had me at “The.”
I’d been planning to see The Motherf**ker with the Hat since I heard that it was coming to Broadway and finally made it about one week before it closes. (Betta late than nevah ;)
In characteristic Guirgis fashion, Mofo, as I affectionately call it, is a window into the lives of other-siders, where, while nobody is a total saint, the most (relatively) upright characters are the ones you (most likely) least expect. At its center is a love triangle among three addicts, two in recovery and one who's currently using, including a sort of comic tragic hero, the ex-con Jackie (the remarkable Bobby Cannavale) who returns home to ebulliently share the news that he's found a job with his feisty girlfriend Veronica (a tour de force from Elizabeth Rodriguez). As they are about to get busy, he spots the motherf**ker with the hat's hat; and ... I urge you to see for yourself.
This was the first time I'd seen a Guirgis play performed in its entirety, and one of the first things that struck me was its energy and intensity. From now on, when given the note by a director or acting teacher to "raise the stakes," I will think about this production. From the very beginning of the show, the actors fuse Guirgis' potent and poignant words with the force and fire—and the funny–embodied by the colorful characters they portray. In one of the scenes Jackie recounts an instance where he fires a gun and the bullet ricochets, which is an apt metaphor for the action and pace of Mofo. Once the lights come up, the play bangs, pows, and pings until its heartbreaking yet hopeful ending.
Article comments