Profanities ablaze. Tensions are high. The question remains, just who is the mother**ker who left his hat?
Directed by Adam Cook, The Motherf**ker With The Hat is a dizzying spin through the lives of a series of addicts and ex-addicts.
The play opens with Veronica (Zoe Trilsbach) engaging in some multitasking: cleaning the apartment, talking to her mother on the phone, and snorting lines of coke. In walks Jackie (Troy Harrison). He’s fresh out of jail, getting clean, and about to shower Veronica in all that is good in life. But then he notices a hat that’s not his in their apartment, and accusations of infidelity begin to fly.
Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’ characters at first seem to invoke stereotypes – the ex-dealer, the health-smoothie-wielding mentor, the gym junkie cousin – but their strength lies in the pure depth of humanity and morality (or lack thereof) that emerges. There is nuance to each of these flawed personas. It is a play that feels very American, in accents, dialogue, and its distinctly Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican) characters, but this never feels distant or out of place; rather another just aspect of the chaotic world of the play.
Everything is fast-paced and high-energy; voices and emotions rise and fall at the drop of the (proverbial) hat. The dialogue is pacey and continually funny, maybe hyperbolic at times, but this play is all about being over-the-top – take the title as a case in point. In sync with the action is the constant movement between the sets, all of which appear clichéd and dingy in their own endearing way.
Overall, it is a story about love and addiction and maybe even humanity, underneath which the classic foul-mouthed slang pervades.
3.5/5 stars
The Motherf**ker With The Hat is playing at Eternity Playhouse until Sunday October 19.
