(Dominic Cavendish’s article appeared in The Telegraph, 6/18.)
Despite its arresting expletive, the title almost has a jaunty air, like an X-rated nod to Dr Seuss. But when those words are spoken, in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s dark comedy of modern urban manners (getting its first UK showing four years after its Broadway premiere), there’s real anger in them.
Jackie, who’s out of prison on parole having forsworn his life as a drug-dealer and drunk, finds an unexplained hat in the Times Square apartment of his cocaine addict girlfriend Veronica. He leaps to the (correct) conclusion that she has been having it off with a mystery man: “The motherf***er left his hat like motherf***ing Zorro leaving his Z all over the scene of the crime! Dass what happened!” he rants.