Stephen Adly Guirgis is a New York City playwright who brings the world stories from the streets, where the conversations can sound astonishingly life-like and not for the squeamish. And his gift for creating complex and thoroughly human characters can be an actor’s dream.
If you want to experience an exquisite intersection of marvelous writing and excellent acting, I recommend Park Square Theatre’s season-closing production of “Between Riverside and Crazy,” a play for which Guirgis won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
For his first time in the director’s chair since being named the company’s artistic director, Stephen DiMenna has helped sculpt a show that sets a high bar with the quality of its stagecraft and promises great things to come for a theater that looked to be on life support as we emerged from the pandemic.
If DiMenna wants Park Square’s niche in our rich and vibrant Twin Cities theater scene to be the place where new plays meet outstanding acting, his production of “Between Riverside and Crazy” is a bold and brilliant assertion of the company’s new identity. Sparked by seven meticulously well-crafted performances, it’s an increasingly gripping tale of one man’s recovery from a tragedy and his winding path toward redemption.
That man is Walter Washington, a New York City cop forced into retirement after a shooting and now recently widowed. Since 1978, he’s lived in a rent-controlled apartment, but he’s facing threats of eviction as he’s opened his home to a son who might be fencing stolen goods and young friends of his who are struggling to stay sober.
When visitors arrive, playwright Guirgis really writes up a storm. Walter’s former beat partner and her fiance come for dinner and a discussion of the protagonist’s next move that turns into a clinic for how to convey hyper-realism and keep it compelling. When a church volunteer comes to check in on Walter, things take a wildly unexpected turn. And when father and son have a long overdue heart-to-heart, it feels disarmingly (and perhaps discomfitingly) real.
As Walter, Emil Herrera deftly captures the practiced calmness and simmering rage of a man wrestling with what justice might look like for him. Most of the time, Walter serves as the stillness at the center of a swirl of more animated characters, but when he asserts control over the conversation, Herrera makes him compelling.
Also thoroughly believable and fascinating to watch are Laura Esping as Walter’s former partner Audrey and Terry Hempleman as her fiance, who’s climbing up the department hierarchy. They make for convincing cops (language alert), and become catalysts for Walter’s quandary: As a Black man who’s experienced racism in the force, he’s conflicted as to whether he’s part of this fraternity or not.
Another combination of great writing and fine acting comes when Kiko Laureano becomes a messenger of magic, as if this visitor has just stepped out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel and into Walter’s apartment. And then there’s Darius Dotch as the son who’s inherited much of his father’s reserve but is similarly seeking some sort of satisfying resolution to this troubled stretch of his life. He’s part of a cast with impeccable chemistry, their skills fusing to help create an excellent production.
‘Between Riverside and Crazy’
When: Through June 8
Where: Park Square Theatre, 20 W. Seventh Place, St. Paul
Tickets: $60-$25, available at 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org
Capsule: A gritty, compelling confluence of brilliant writing and outstanding acting.
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