THE MOTHERF**KER WITH THE HAT is a new high-octane, verbal cage match about love, fidelity, and misplaced haberdashery from playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Jackie and Veronica have been in love since the 8th grade. But now, Jackie is on parole and living clean and sober under the guidance of his sponsor, Ralph D, while still living and loving with his volatile soul mate Veronica who is fiercely loving, but far from sober. Still, their love is pure. And true. Nothing can come between them - except a hat.
Shapiro directs her actors to play the comedy very truthfully but quickly on an impressive setting designed by Todd Rosenthal that rapidly flips between three different apartments. A metal staircase that zigzags towards the heavens, a vertical slice of Manhattan skyline and a vast, empty billboard frame looming above the action lends visual grandeur to a human comedy that some viewers are likely to recognize as being all too close to home.
In a good Guirgis play (and my favorite is The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, overstuffed and Wiki-stubbed as it was), there’s always some glimmering, bobbing moral buoy that recedes but never vanishes as the bumptious, hair-trigger characters kick up waves of slangy chaos. Here, as Jackie faces off against a bottomless pit of moral relativism (“What are we, Europeans or some shit?”), the buoy goes under and, for the most part, stays there. But the play really doesn’t have the heft to earn the death of hope, nor does it have the stones or the seriousness to declare hope officially dead. Motherf**ker mainly concerns itself with a lot of big, mordant laughs (with Yul Vazquez, as Jackie’s slightly Aspie ex-sex-addict cousin Julio, walking away with the show’s chewy center). Jabbing exchanges like “I coulda fucked your wife the other night!” / “Shit, I coulda fucked your girl the other day — and I did!” land solidly in the audience’s breadbasket, yet overall, the play feels jumpy and scant. Anna D. Shapiro hops from laugh to laugh at such a workmanlike tempo, the characters sometimes feel on the verge of urban blue-collar caricature. Despite the monumental pain they feel, these people lack the savor we hear in Guirgis’s best stuff.
2011 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2011 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Bobby Cannavale |
2011 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | Yul Vázquez |
2011 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Stephen Adly Guirgis |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Bobby Cannavale |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Director of a Play | Anna D. Shapiro |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | Yul Vazquez |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Elizabeth Rodriguez |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | 0 |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Set Design | Todd Rosentha |
2011 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Yul Vazquez |
2011 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Annabella Sciorra |
2011 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Elizabeth Rodriguez |
2011 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Chris Rock |
2011 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Bobby Cannavale |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Anna D. Shapiro |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Yul Vazquez |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Bobby Cannavale |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Elizabeth Rodriguez |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Stephen Adly Guirgis |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Stephen Adly Guirgis |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Scott Rudin |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Stuart Thompson |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | The Public Theater |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Oskar Eustis |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Mimi O'Donnell |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Carl Moellenberg |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Joey Parnes |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Labyrinth Theater Company |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Yul Vazquez |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Danny Feldman |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Fabula Media Partners LLC |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Jean Doumanian/Ruth Hendel |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Jamie deRoy |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Tulchin Bartner |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Jon B. Platt |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Todd Rosenthal |
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