By Lauren Yarger
Comedian Chris Rock makes his Broadway debut in The Motherf**ker with the Hat, Stephen Adly Guirgis dark play that will make you laugh – and want to wash your ears out with soap.
Rock plays Ralph D, an AA sponsor helping Jackie (Bobby Cannavale), a recent parolee, try to stay straight while putting his life with longtime girlfriend Veronica (Elizabeth Rodriguez) back together.
That’s easier said than done. Veronica is, to put it mildly, a hungry manhood-eating Godzilla on wheels who is using drugs herself. She also might be stepping out on Jackie with another guy – the motherf**ker who left his hat behind while making a fast exit from the couple’s rundown apartment (shabbily designed with towering outdoor and building features by Todd Rosenthal).
Ralph encourages Jackie to drop Veronica – and the gun he has acquired to shoot the guy with the hat. He may not have gotten through, however, since the sponsor is distracted by his own problems. His wife, Victoria (Annabella Sciorra), regrets giving up her successful life to marry Ralph and is threatening to leave him and/or have an affair of her own.
Jackie turns for help to his health-food-cooking cousin Julio (Yul Vazquez) who thinks of himself as a Claude Van Dam clone, but years of Jackie’s treating Julio badly might keep him from getting involved. As the lives of the characters get more entangled, questions about which rules matter and who your real friends are and how well any of us really knows anyone else surface.
Cannavale gives a solid performance as the seemingly poor-choice-making guy who just might have the strongest moral character of the bunch. Rodriguez makes a stunning Broadway debut wielding a full arsenal of emotion sharpened by impeccable comedic timing. Director Anna D. Shapiro fails to coax Rock out of a timid mode, however, and we don’t get the full range of that character.
Guirgis creates interesting characters who are oddly likable, and peppers the script with some really funny dialogue throughout. The overuse of ear-blistering language, however, detracts from the play. While these folks, in their particular lifestyles, might realistically use such language, they probably would not suddenly wax poetic, sound extremely articulate and exude gems of wisdom, which they often do so that Guirgis can make a point. You can’t have it both ways, and toning the language certainly would have enhanced the message, not to mention given this play a title which its stars might actually been able to say when marketing it on television or the radio without getting bleeped. Less is more.
The show runs at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th St., NYC through June 26. For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or 800-432-7250.
Christians might also like to know:
• Strong language and sexual dialogue throughout
• Drug usage
• Sexual activity
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