So when it was announced that the play would be among the first of Rufus Norris' opening season as National Theatre director, I booked. I also wanted an excuse to say MOTHERFUCKER in a blog. And I liked the poster design.
I was more than a little worried that Owen would sit through it with a gob as he has professed he finds it hard to like plays with unsympathetic characters - and all the characters in the play have their flaws - but figured that a playing time of 1 hour 45 minutes would make it palatable.
I have only seen one Adly Guirgis play before when in 2002, his prison drama JESUS HOPPED THE A TRAIN appeared at the Arts Theatre directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and produced by among others a certain Mrs Madonna Ritchie. Can you guess now why I saw it? I remember it being vaguely well written but not too much else about it.
In this new play the playwright presents us with a group of characters who are also dealing in extreme circumstances, mostly of their own design.
Jackie is getting his life together: out of jail, no longer dealing drugs and is clean and sober. Okay there is the slight problem that his longtime lover Veronica is a coke-user with an explosive temper but Jackie has an AA sponsor who is keeping him focused on his recovery programme. The really good news is that he has found a full-time job and after telling Veronica they decide to have sex to celebrate. While she has a shower, Jackie gets the bed ready... and that's when he sees the hat. The hat that is not his. This one discovery catapults Jacky into a fit of jealousy that rivals Othello and he will not rest until he punishes it's owner.
This misplaced hat sets off a chain of expletive-driven events which draws in the AA sponsor Ralph, Ralph's disdainful wife Victoria and Jackie's Cousin Julio, a masseuse who also knows how to be stand up for himself thanks to a love of Van Damme movies.
The remarkable thing about this play is that Adly Guirgis subtly pulls the rug out from under your feet while you watch it. After the discovery of the hat I thought "Oh I know what this is going to be like" but found this initial viewpoint being changed: yes the protagonists do stupid things - mostly to other people - but they are all so vividly drawn - and allowed the space to explain themselves - that by the end, they no longer seem cartoon-like but more like fully-rounded and sadly flawed people.
Indhu Rubasingham has given us a production that whips along like an A Train with only a slight longeur in the final confrontation between Jackie and the owner of the hat (I won't spoil it for you) but that was forgiven by a final scene between Jackie and Veronica, again set up to make you expect one conclusion but that suddenly delivers a moment of genuine pathos. She is helped by an excellent cast who feel less like actors than a bunch of New Yorkers who have been let loose on the Lyttelton stage to argue and occasionally show affection.
There are three American actors in the cast who bring a whiff of Hell's Kitchen to the stage: Ricardo Chaviro was great as Jackie, trying to keep clean but flirting with disaster in his clumsy attempts at revenge but able to turn on a dime to show the hidden fear hidden by the bravado. Flor De Liz Perez was delightfully volcanic as Veronica - imagine a *more* volcanic Rosie Perez and you are halfway there towards her performance of a woman whose salty language is always her first line of defence. How much does she love Jackie? Well she would kick a three-legged kitten down a flight of stairs for him. Now *that's* love.
The two UK actors in the cast are Alec Newman, delightfully annoying as Ralph the always positive AA sponsor who turns out to be just as desperate to hang onto sobriety in the face of his wife's indifference to his love of nutrition-based health drinks and psycho-babble while Nathalie Armin was a basilisk of disdain as Victoria.
Luckily the production has Yul Vásquez as the enigmatic Cousin Julio, a role he played on Broadway for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Jackie always turns to the outwardly calm Julio when in his direst need but Julio is under no illusions that Jackie actually likes him. In a memorable scene, Julio confronts Jackie with this knowledge but then follows up his accusations with the reason he will always be there for Jackie which is as touching as it is unexpected. Vásquez provided an oasis of calm and humour in a desert of scorched relationships.
The production also gains from having an excellent set design by Robert Jones, the play's three interiors silently slide out of darkness when needed as three floating fire-escape walkways configure for each scene, silently bringing to life the urban setting of the play. Equal applause goes to Oliver Fenwick's lighting.
After the dreary, over-produced LIGHT SHINING ON BUCKINGHAMSHIRE on the same stage, this is an exciting way for Norris to show what his tenure at the National might be like. I can't recommend this play enough, you'd be a motherfucker to miss it.
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