‘Between Riverside and Crazy’ Lies Dramatic Perfection on Broadway

Are you in New York City for Christmas? Wondering how to spend one of those afternoons or evenings that seem to magically exist outside of time? Here is the perfect play, and one of the last Broadway openings of the year. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy (Hayes Theater, to Feb 12), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2015 as well as a deserved host of other awards, is a buffed jewel of a production directed (perfectly) by Austin Pendleton, most recently seen stealing scenes as a shambolic local council member in The Minutes. It has a complementary jewel of a central performance by the Tony-nominated veteran actor Stephen McKinley Henderson as Walter Washington, aka Pops.

Henderson is supported by a group of other terrific performances—including by Rosal Colón as Pops’ son’s girlfriend Lulu, the Lucille Lortel Award-winning Liza Colón-Zayas as a mysterious woman from a local church, and Michael Rispoli as a manipulative, and also annoyingly extremely hilarious, former police colleague Lieutenant Caro—who bring the play’s stew of domestic turbulence, racial politics, and financial shenanigans to a witty, angry, and moving boil.

The cast is almost the same as it was when the play premiered in 2014 (the same year of its setting) at the Atlantic Theater Company, with the only addition/substitution being the Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy-winning artist and activist Common making his Broadway debut as Pops’ recently paroled son Junior, who Pops both loves and is ashamed of.

Read more at The Daily Beast.