The LA Beat

The nightmare of survivor’s guilt can be a prolonged, excruciating, never-ending darkness that is often endured by the perpetrators loved ones just as much as the victims’ families as lives are left in shambles. Everyone that is left to pick up the pieces asks the same question…WHY?

“Exit Wounds” answers that question nobly and well-reasoned, but, as with the false optimism of closure, sometimes the survivors learn that there is rarely any such relief, no less answers that can explain a thing.

In playwright Wendy Graf’s own words “Exit Wounds” is not a play about guns. It is not a platform nor a lecture on gun control. It is a story about a scarred family learning to heal.”
Truer words were never spoken as Graf, the Gold Medallion winner of the Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle New Play Initiative for 2019 takes a hard and harrowing look at an all too familiar tragedy from today’s headlines.

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“The cycle of self-sabotage” is not only a line of dialogue from the current Studio Stage offering at the Long Beach Playhouse but is also a recurring theme that the characters cannot escape no matter how hard they may believe that they try.

“The Motherfucker with the Hat” is a hard-hitting and uncompromising look at the nightmare of addiction, recovery, betrayal and AA culture. Like slamming three shots of whiskey neat, the Tony Award winning work from Pulitzer Prize recipient playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis is sharp, concise and very witty in the face of the never-ending emotional disaster for its inhabitants.

Foul-mouthed and fast moving, this presentation is not for the easily offended, nor should it be. What it does do is entertain and enlighten, not outrage.

The play opens with a pre-recorded curtain speech peppered with so many expletives and f-bombs that at that point one can either run for the door or buckle in. Judging by the nervous laughter, all in attendance chose the latter as the play opened in a New York City apartment as Jackie (expertly essayed by Brandon Prado) enters his girlfriend Veronica’s (played with sass and bravado by Tammy Mora) apartment fresh out of jail but full of hope on the horizon; he’s clean, sober, recently employed and in love as he brings her presents and enthusiastic promises. The sexual heat of the moment prompts Veronica to jump in the shower as Jackie suddenly discovers an unfamiliar men’s hat on the table. His suspicions aroused, he sees the telltale signs of a former sexual liaison and the accusations fly. Continue reading →