Between Riverside and Crazy @ Hampstead Theatre, London
Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play is a twisty plot, where no-one is quite what they seem to be, and gets us thinking about fathers and sons, inter-generational friendships and revenge vs justice, and even reparations. Although sold as a Black Lives Matter play with an off-duty black cop shot and wounded by a white cop (for the dangerous crime of daring to have a few after work drinks peacefully in a bar), this isn’t really what the play is about at all.
Danny Sapani plays Walter ‘Pops’ Washington, a father to real and adopted children. He’s wheelchair bound (though the wheelchair is for his deceased wife, not him). In emphasising his frailty, grief, dependence and weakness, he relies on younger others to supply all his needs, whilst fighting an ongoing legal battle with the city to get his dues. There’s a battered Christmas tree to one side! and a huge graffiti rat/mouse king on the wall behind. Do they know it’s Christmas? (It’s hard to tell).
His son, Junior (Martins Imhangbe) appears to be more focused than his whisky and pie consuming father, protesting at his father’s lack of care for his mother’s prized possessions. But he also keeps bringing mysterious cardboard boxes into the house. Then there is his partner Lulu (Tiffany Gray) who may or may not be an accountant in training, but who very much respects Pops. Added to the mix is Oswaldo (Sebastian Orozco), estranged from his own father, who also lives as part of this family and is affirmed by the fatherly Walter in his recovery. Only Oswaldo visits his father and wreaks a terrible outworking on Pops after being rejected and humiliated again by his parent again. Which is heart-rending for all of them given that Pops has cared for and affirmed him, homed him and parented him.
Curmudgeonly to the end, Pops sneers and resents the ‘church ladies’ of the neighbourhood, who seek to reform him — and see him make something of himself, to do something with himself and his life, to get out of his chair. They visited his dying wife — and now they visit him, perhaps placing him in the same camp. Until he gets new visitors — friends from his police days who are engaged to be married (worth putting out the silver candelabra for), and a replacement ‘church lady’, who is more magical and disturbing than the previous visitor. She has Pops attention, standing up for herself and challenging him!
Reminiscing about ‘good old times’, his colleagues suddenly drop an emotional bomb shell on him. The NYPD want him to drop his law suit, stop calling out his attacker as racist and shut up and go away, without a financial pay-out. His landlord sees him and his ‘family’ as disreputable and want them gone, out of sight and out of mind. Pops wants to apologise to his dead wife, to be whole, to be a good father to the young men around him, even a doting, protective grandfather if Lulu and Junior will let him.
The second visit is from cookie and juice demolishing stand-in Church Lady (Ayesha Antoine). Who is less Church Lady and more priestess, claiming the power to ‘heal’ Pops — which doesn’t go as either of them expect. Back in hospital, a newly potent Pops concocts a plan worthy of Tarantino movie — dealing with the NYPD, his truth of events, his desire for cash, the landlord, his family and the church ladies in one sweep. Somehow, out of all the mess and lies, he skips off in hope!
I love the character of Lulu, who ‘just because she looks like she does’ still wants to be considered a full human being — intelligent, loving and respected. Tiffany Gray lights up the stage every time she’s infront of us, bringing depth and gravity to her character. Junior reveals how his mother used him as a sounding-board in the marriage, an unwilling participant to how his father treated and mistreated her. Faith is messily presented here (more cultural and words than anything), but the compassion Pops has for the ‘Church Lady’ when he encounters her later, is beautiful. His friends are one-dimensional tropes, mouthpieces for the authorities and only to be counter-attacked and thwarted.
The writing is engaging and we care about the characters, but it promises more depth than it delivers. Pops sees his guilt and shame, but doesn’t face up to it. He doesn’t get to be a grandfather. He blackmails his colleagues into getting what he wants, even as he reveals the truth of his claims and deprives them of what they have. Can we trust any of these narrators? Lulu longs to be loved for herself, and Junior wants space, although we later learn that his life has been tough too, as has hers. Somehow Oswaldo comes back, recreating his ‘family’ with Lulu and Junior, as Pops moves on into a light-filled new future.
I expected a play version of Blue: the Opera — instead I found an engaging, free-wheeling story, with lots of layers, but maybe not as much depth as it thinks it has. Though it is a work of love to those despised by society and authorities, trying to survive and thrive inspite of everything and everyone. And it’s Danny Sapani who lights the stage up.
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