Fountain Theatre scores a major coup by beating out the biggies with the Los Angeles Premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Between Riverside And Crazy.

Audiences familiar with the playwright’s previous work won’t be surprised to learn that Between Riverside And Crazy’s cast of characters are both deeply flawed and profoundly human, and Guirgis takes his deliberate time in letting us get to know them before finally detailing, almost an hour in, the conflict that will henceforth propel this darkest of dark comedies.

Meet 60something African-American retired NYPD cop Walter Washington, aka Pops (Montae Russell), who’s starting this winter-of-2015 Saturday with a breakfast of pie and whiskey while shooting the breeze with his grown son’s recovering addict friend Oswaldo (Victor Anthony) while studiously avoiding the young Puerto Rican’s suggestion that he switch to almonds for the sake of his blood pressure and heart.

Also sharing the recently widowed ex-cops’ rent-controlled Riverside Drive apartment is his frequently incarcerated adult son Junior (Matthew Hancock), whose stash of stolen electronic items for sale suggest that the younger Washington hasn’t yet opted for the straight and narrow.

The same can apparently not be said for Junior’s skimpily clad live-in girlfriend Lulu (Marisol Miranda), that is if her claim to be a City College accounting major is to believed.

Guirgis sprinkles in hints of trouble ahead.

There’s the manila envelope that’s been posted on Pops’ door, the latest communique from a landlord who’s apparently got something other than good will on his mind.

There’s also the matter, briefly mentioned, of a lawsuit that Junior says Pops ought to have settled with the city years ago, but that’s about all Guirgis clues us into until Walter’s decades-younger former beat partner Detective Audrey O’Connor (Lesley Fera) and her fiance Lt. Dave Caro (Joshua Bitton) arrive at his apartment to celebrate their engagement.

It’s only then that Guirgis reveals his own hand, and don’t let anyone tell you more than I have, the better to savor the many surprise twists the Pulitzer Prize winner has up his sleeve, though I will let slip that some of them involve a certain Brazilian “Church Lady” (Liza Fernandez) who shows up in Act Two.

Between Riverside and Crazy may feature as racially diverse a cast as casts get these days, but there’s nothing at all black-and-white about any of them.

In other words, no matter how reprehensible Walter et al may appear to be at first (or even second) glance, they’re never anything less than three-dimensional amalgams of good and evil and everything in between.

Factor in hot-button issues of police violence, racism, and corruption (along with references to Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump that could have been written yesterday and not half-a-decade ago) and you’ve got a play that is not only of the moment, it may well be Guirgis’s chef-d’oeuvre.

Director Guillermo Cienfuegos elicits dynamic, nuanced performances from one of the year’s best comedic-dramatic ensembles.

Russell’s tour-de-force star turn matches Arthur Miller’s greatest patriarchs in complexity and depth, whether raging against the machine, or fate, or a God who would take away his manhood and then his wife.

Anyone who caught Hancock’s “Judy Garland” in Ike Holter’s Hit The Wall will be dazzled by the gifted young actor’s transformation into street-tough Junior; those who witnessed Fera’s mean-as-a-snake Isobel wipe the floor with Bitton’s pathetic wimp of a coworker in Mike Bartlett’s Bull will be equally astounded by their straight-outta-Brooklyn cops in love; Fernandez goes from Oregonian abuse-survivor in the recent Apple Season to quirky Brazilian seductress to remarkable effect; and Anthony and Miranda are every bit as terrific in roles the native New Yorkers were born to play.

Though scenic/projection designer David Mauer would be better served by a larger stage than the Fountain affords him in creating the palatial Riverside mansion Guirgis describes, he does his ingenious best in the space he’s been given, and his fellow designers’ work–Christine Cover Ferro (costumes), Shen Heckel (set decoration), Christopher Moscatiello (sound), Matt Richter (lighting)–is as good as it gets.

Myrna Gawryn is movement/intimacy coordinator. Jonathan Rider is fight director. Lexi Hettick is production stage manager and Chloe Willey is assistant stage manager. Scott Tuomey is technical director.

Between Riverside And Crazy is produced by James Bennett, Deborah Culver, Simon Levy, and Stephen Sachs. Barbara Herman is executive producer.

Contemporary play-writing at its most original and Los Angeles theater at its finest, Between Riverside And Crazy is Between Something Else And Sensational.

The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles.
www.FountainTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
October 28, 2019
Photos: Jenny Graham

Tags: Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Stephen Adly Guirgis