The Motherf**ker With the Hat

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre

New York

(212) 239-6200

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How is a theater lover supposed to spread the word about a play when it has a title that can’t be spoken in polite company? said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. For the director, writer, and performers behind this “surprisingly serious new comedy” about five urban lives in collision, that’s a problem they can surely live with. This “fast and furious” production pairs “by far the most accomplished and affecting work” of its gifted playwright with a cast that features a “blazingly good” Bobby Cannavale, a ferocious Elizabeth Rodriguez, and a “solid” Chris Rock, in his Broadway debut. The characters’ penchant for “getting on one another’s nerves” triggers loud scraps that make Hat feel like a “contemporary, scabrous variation on The Honeymooners”—except that among this foulmouthed group of booze, pot, and cocaine abusers, the flare-ups are often “fueled by substances that Ralph Kramden had probably never heard of.”

Suspicion of sexual betrayal lies at the heart of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “splendidly well-made” script, but the story’s “real subject turns out to be moral relativism,” said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. Cannavale’s Jackie, a hotheaded, recently paroled drug dealer, struggles throughout to tame his self-destructive impulses, especially after a man’s hat mysteriously materializes in the bedroom he shares with his girlfriend. But it’s Rock’s character, Jackie’s smooth-talking AA sponsor, who proves to be most willing to take advantage of other people. Revealing more would take the fun out of the “steady stream of surprising cards” that the story deals. Suffice it to say, Hat is “one of the best new plays to come to Broadway in ages.”

Rock’s performance might be the only thing holding the production back, said Adam Feldman in Time Out New York. The comedian “seems ill at ease” on stage, and his stiffness hampers his ability to play a man “defined by his charisma.” Rock was the focus of the pre-opening hype about this show, but its “real light and heat” come from his riveting co-stars.