You go to a play called The
Motherfucker With the Hat (nahhh, I’m not going to use the asterisks) in a mood of anticipation
and hope. There’s something so ineffably hip about the title—it gives you tone, a certain class of
character, even patios. You kinda know who you’re gonna be hangin’ with even
before you take your seat. And sure enough…
Ex-con/ex-addict
Jackie (Bobby Canavale) is really trying
to turn his life around and he’s just gotten a new job to start him on his way,
and his hot, streetwise (or is that streetmouth?) g-friend Veronica (Elizabeth
Rodriguez) is gonna love him up so much
they’ll both be rag dolls when it’s over, and she goes into the next room to
get all slinky ‘n’ shit, and he’s rippin’ off his clothes and he’s about to
jump into bed in anticipation when he sees—
—on
the living room table: a man’s hat. And it ain’t his.
And
now he sniffs the sheets. And he smells spunk and pussy. And he goes ballistic.
And now she enters to see what it is and the she goes ballistic, denyin’, but no, he ain’t buyin’, he can read the
evidence—
—and
he storms out to get advice from his friend Ralph D. (Chris Rock). And if it’s possible for a slick-smart,
narcissistic player to be an Ayn Rand objectivist, he be dat, cuz he preaches
the code of selfish self-preservation—and the evidence of his lifestyle (all
the comforts, not so much the work to get ‘em) would seem to indicate he’s got
it all together. But his very unhappy wife (Annabella Sciorra) has a
different story to tell…
And
that’s where a synopsis needs to stop, because beyond that, you’re giving away
the game, and the game is romantic comedy from the low-rent, tough life side of
the tracks. Minimum of romance, the comedy is often near-harrowing and the
ending ain’t Rock and Doris. But the script by Stephen Adly Guirgis is as uncompromising as it is gut-punch funny, and
that’s very. All you really know is that, in its rough-hewn way, the play is
about honor and conflicting personal codes. (And that Yul Vásquez fills out the excellent cast playing the unexpected
off-white knight character of Jackie’s Cousin Julio).
The
direction by Anna Shapiro is as
fine-tuned and edgy as the writing; not a missed beat. The cast delivers an
essay on various styles of volatility, save for Chris Rock, as the cool cat
guru. Of all the performances, his is the least accomplished in terms of what
I’ll call thespian polish; but here that’s all to the good—he plays a guy that
things (and people) don’t really get to, and that little bit of “y’all are just
not quite down with me, but that’s cool, I ain’t judgin’”-ness his standup comic’s
persona lends the role is just perfect for it. In fact, I wonder if it’d be as
effective if played by a theatrical veteran.
You’ll
like The Motherfucker With the Hat. Title’s
even a dope metaphor. Sayn’ no matter how good you are or how hard you try, in
each life there’s always a
motherfucker with a hat…It’s what you do about him that defines yo’ ass…
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