King Lear, But Rent Controlled: Between Riverside and Crazy
9 / 10
That may sound like a downer of an evening, but Guirgis’s play is speckled with his customary wry humor and genuine strangeness that lifts it from straight issue drama into something lovelier and weirder. Often, there’s just the delight of the dialogue. Lulu is purportedly studying to be an accountant, but as Walter notes, “her lips move when she read the horoscope — that ain’t the mark of a future accountant!” The play sometimes seems like it’s heading toward one possible conclusion, but then Guirgis ducks away from the obvious. In the second act, Walter has an encounter with a lady from his church (played by Liza Colón-Zayas, another routinely excellent performer who deserves a bigger platform) that veers into possibly dreamlike absurdity. That scene and its heightened aftermath may be hard to swallow, but it’s performed with such conviction that I was fully along for the ride. There’s a sense that the strictures of New York life are so wild on their own — from the real-estate laws on down — that the only possible recourse is to embrace the crazy yourself. In a maddening time, go a little mad.
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