Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis has an abiding affection for characters living on the margins: the unemployed, the imprisoned, the drug-addled, the violent.
By comparison to some of his frenetically paced earlier works, “Between Riverside and Crazy,” the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner now onstage at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre, seems kind of soft and sitcom-esque.
At the center of this study of race and community is Pops (Earl Billings), a former New York City police officer who lives in a capacious apartment with his son, Junior (Keith Arthur Bolden); Junior’s girlfriend, Lulu (Annamaria Dvorak); Junior’s recoving drug-addict friend, Oswaldo (Cristian Gonzalez); and the memory of his recently departed wife.
In the opening scene, Pops sits at his kitchen table, eating a breakfast of pie and whiskey. Oswaldo, who has traded his Ring Dings® and Fanta® grape soda for almonds and vitaminwater® , suggests that Pops might suffer from an emotional eating disorder. You can only imagine how Pops responds to that.
Pops is the father figure that the needy Oswaldo is missing, the glue that holds this fragile domestic arrangement together. But as Guirgis peels back the veneer, we come to see that Pops is in just as much trouble as his thieving son, Junior’s pregnant girlfriend, and the frightened Oswaldo.
By turns raucously comic and borderline tragic, “Between Riverside and Crazy” is a study in fraud and deception. Everybody is a con man. No one tells the truth. And Guirgis, straddling a line somewhere between “Sanford and Son” and the plays of August Wilson, never stops surprising us.
Even in the final seconds, we aren’t quite sure where Pops is headed, though he appears touched by a particular kind of grace: transformed, buoyant, reborn.
Yet before he is untethered by the mysterious Church Lady (Diany Rodriguez), the Pops we meet is in limbo.
He’s been shot and injured by a fellow cop. His eight-year legal battle with the city is coming to a head just as his landlord is trying to evict him from his rent-controlled apartment. But what really happened the morning the white police officer unloaded his gun on Pops?
When his former partner, Detective Audrey O’Connor (Jerri Tubbs) and her fiance, Lieutenant Dave Caro (Andrew Benator), stop by for what appears to be a friendly visit, they end up painting a dire picture of Pops’ future. As Act One ends, it appears that things are about to get real ugly — real quick.
But after a strange visitation from the Church Lady, and a kind of sexual healing, Pops gets his groove back.
That may be more than you need to know about the plot.
What remains to be said is that director Eric J. Little and his actors deliver a delicious and provocative evening of theater.
Billings is excellent, and his portrayal of Pops is the heart and soul of this tawdry affair. Rodriguez’s Church Lady goes from prim and buttoned-up to exuding a kind of sexy, supernatural urgency that is quite astonishing, and fun. Benator and Tubbs are smart and muscular in their portrayals of seemingly caring cops who pack an agenda.
Gonzalez is nicely convincing as a man who goes from tender to dangerous in a heartbeat, and Dvorak is funny as the vacuous, scantily glad girlfriend with the heart of gold. Only Bolden’s Junior is a little disappointing, though he gets better as the drama grows more intense.
On the visual side, set designers Moriah and Isabel Curley-Clay imagine a wonderfully realistic apartment and rooftop perch. (Jarrod Barnes’ costumes are just right, too.)
When the characters retreat to that open-air spot with its expansive view of the world, they can’t help but dream of a better place.
How they do (and do not) get there is what makes this play such a stunner.
THEATER REVIEW
“Between Riverside and Crazy”
Grade: A-
11 a.m. Wednesdays. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through Aug. 6. Tickets start at $20. 11 a.m. Wednesday shows are $15. True Colors Theatre Company, Southwest Arts Center, 915 New Hope Road, Atlanta. 877-725-8849; truecolorstheatre.org
Bottom line: Fine balance of affecting drama and low comedy.
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