City Hall is demanding more than his signature, the landlord wants him out, the liquor store is closed – and the Church won’t leave him alone. For ex-cop and recent widower Walter “Pops” Washington and his recently paroled son Junior, the struggle to hold on to one of the last great rent stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive collides with old wounds, sketchy new houseguests and a final ultimatum in this Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy from Stephen Adly Guirgis. For Pops and Junior, it seems the Old Days are dead and gone – after a lifetime living Between Riverside and Crazy.
Who else involved with Between Riverside and Crazy deserves those greatly earned kudos? How about Henderson, one of Broadway’s and off Broadway’s longtime reliable character actors? Guirgis has handed him a role that makes his abilities undeniable. As Walter, Henderson has a part that gives him wide opportunities to keep his gifts on non-stop display. There’s a persistent quality in the player, something at his core that always confirms the quiet but unquestionable truth in whomever he’s playing. And what of director Austin Pendleton, arguably the habitually busiest member of the New York City theater community? Last on Broadway stealing scenes in Tracy Letts’ The Minutes, he blithely and boldly returns as the Between Riverside and Crazy director. (Besides acting and directing, Pendleton is a playwright and acting teacher. Does he ever have any spare time? If he does, he probably spends it seeing a play.) Because Guirgis packs so much to be unpacked in his scripts—the drama, the humor, much of it intricately simultaneous—Pendleton must unleash and restrain the actors not just from minute to minute but from second to second. He doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t miss any of the potential nuances within a beat. Neither under his firm hand do any of the supporting actors. Perhaps Pendleton’s directorial request once he’s chosen his ensemble and has complete trust in them is to tell them to do what they do and feel confident doing it. Most likely, he says more, but knows how, as they interact, to shift focus nimbly. His is masterful directing.
Everyone should see it anyway, to experience the pleasure of a great cast making a shrimps-and-veal meal of the incredibly rich material, even as it flips between comedy and tragedy on its way to the truth in between. Actually, that meal may even be too rich at points; the final scene can’t quite digest all that came before, and there are brief moments throughout when the actors’ love for the material itself begins to show through the facade of character, like those bricks behind the plaster. For the most part, though, Pendleton’s production is amazingly confident, featuring not just Walt Spangler’s set, but also top-notch lighting by Keith Parham, sound and music by Ryan Rumery and, especially, costumes by Alexis Forte, which tell their own story on top of Guirgis’s. And when the scene changes are as expressive as the actors’ attention to every nuance of each other’s actions, staging becomes a kind of emotional choreography: thrilling, precise, impossible to pin down.
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