Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Layne Coleman
Bob Kills Theatre, The Coal Mine, 798 Danforth Ave., Toronto
November 11-30, 2014
Jackie: “"Your – whaddyacallit – your world view? It ain't mine. And the day it is,
that's the day I shoot myself in the head”
The deliberately in-yer-face title of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ latest play might lead you believe that its content might be even more provocative than his previous works like Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train (2000), Our Lady of 121st Street (2003) or The Last Day of Judas Iscariot (2005). As it turns out The Motherf**ker with the Hat (for so it is spelled in the programme) is more compact and conventional in form and structure than the first two plays and less grandiose in theme than the last. In fact, if you take away the coarse language and imagery to which Guirgis’ characters are inured, the story of Hat, for short is really about such old-fashioned questions as how to be moral in a corrupt world and whether some betrayals are beyond forgiveness. Under director Layne Coleman the cast gives white-hot performances.
Compared to Guirgis’ other plays, the plot of Hat is quite simple. Jackie (Sergio Di Zio), a former drug dealer now a parolee, comes home to Veronica (Melissa D’Agostino), his girlfriend since Grade 8, with some great news. He just got a job and feels his life may finally have turned a corner. He has managed to stay away from booze and drugs and is better at controlling his anger. Now he has a job with the possibility of promotion. He and Veronica might finally be able to live the normal life they always dreamed of.
There are only two problems. Veronica is still hooked on booze and drugs with no sign of getting clean. And worse, there is a man’s hat on the table that is not Jackie’s and the male smell in the bed is also not his. Veronica’s mixture of lies and pleas to forget the incident lead Jackie to leave her to seek help from his AA sponsor Ralph (Ted Dykstra).
Ralph is a proudly reformed alcoholic who likes to set himself up as Jackie’s role model. Ralph has turned his life so far around from his old ways that he is now a health and fitness nut, purveyor of “nutritional drinks” and firm believer in 12-step plans to recovery. He is married to the beautiful Victoria (Nicole Stamp), who gave up a promising career in finance to be with him. What Jackie wants is a gun to scare the guy with the hat whom he thinks he knows. For that, Ralph and Jackie have to visit Jackie’s gay Puerto Rican cousin Julio (Juan Chioran), who has the connections, unwilling as he is to use them, to get a weapon.
As it turns out, Jackie’s quest to punish the guy with the hat is more than a little ironic since Jackie, Ralph and their two women have all been unfaithful to their partners at some time or other. The only character who has remained faithful to his partner is Julio, but even his partner (never seen) has betrayed him. Surrounded by such moral chaos, Sergio faces the question of how to be a moral person since he firmly believes that that will help him to improve his life. When Victoria offers herself to Jackie because she wants to “forget everything” for at least a few minutes, Jackie states that, much as he would like to give in, he believes there is a “code” that he wants to follow that prevents him from adultery. When Jackie finally discovers the truth concerning the man with the hat, he then faces the more difficult question of how much he is able to forgive those concerned.
Sergio Di Zio has always given fine performances in the past, but his performance in Hat is truly extraordinary. If it is not Dora-worthy I don’t know what is. His character covers a huge emotional arc and Di Zio traverses it all the time making us aware of Jackie’s conflicting emotions. He makes the struggle of an unlucky man to be virtuous absolutely gripping since he has to fight against his own flaws as well as those of all around him. Throughout the action we root for him since Di Zio makes so clear what effort it takes Jackie to force himself to do what he thinks is morally right rather than follow instincts that he knows would only lead him into more trouble.
As Veronica, D’Agostino represents the complexity of what Jackie is up against. The fact that Jackie and Veronica love each other is never in doubt. What is in doubt is whether Jackie’s love and desire to change can cope with a partner who is addicted to lies and drugs and is in denial about it. D’Agostino accomplishes the difficult task of making us see simultaneously what is good and attractive in Veronica and what is so deeply flawed about her.
Dykstra has the great role of Ralph, whose conversion to healthy living somehow does not cover the whiff of the con man that he still carries with him. We would like to believe that Jackie’s sponsor is the right person to go to for help, but his penchant for slogans and his new convert’s enthusiasm to fitness only highlight his shallowness. Dykstra brings off the role with great humour and panache.
We don’t find out much about Nicole Stamp’s character until the second half of the play. There she makes us see that Victoria is far from the bimbo we had assumed would fall for someone like Ralph. She may be alluring but she is also burdened with the bitter knowledge concerning the realities of her choices and Ralph’s.
The character of Julio is a bit of a problem. On the one hand he’s a slightly effeminate salon owner and rather too close to being a limp-wristed cliché. On the other, he’s a gym bunny and made himself a martial arts expert with Jean-Claude Van Damme as his hero. One has the feeling that Guirgis has tried to counter one cliché by simply grafting another one on to it. It is entirely to Chioran’s credit that he is able to make these two sides of the character work together as well as he can, although the result still has the vibe of forced political correctness. At least, Guirgis give Julio the best written long speech of the play which Chioran brings off beautifully, even winning a round of mid-show applause for it.
Bob Kills Theatre has staged the show in the round in the intimate new basement space of The Coal Mine. Steve Lucas’s functional set serves as three different apartments, but Layne Coleman’s pacey direction is still so precise we’re never in doubt which is which.
With Hat, some Guirgis fans may be disappointed that he seems to have given up the daring experimentalism of his earlier work. On the other hand, this new play is different for Guirgis in that is focusses so closely on the development of a single character. What is missing from Guirgis’ earlier work is the sense of the mystical – the sense that the amoral, profanity-riddled lives of his characters actually are part of a larger pattern with theological implications. Yet, even if this is true, the performances in Hat are so thoroughly riveting no lover of modern drama will want to miss them.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Sergio Di Zio, Juan Chioran, Ted Dykstra; Sergio Di Zio and Melissa D’Agostino. ©2014 Matt Campagna.
For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/859215.
2014-11-12
The Motherf**ker with the Hat