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.
However, it’s Henderson who shakes the stage. The wonderful actor, who’s been a regular for years in plays by August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry and in films as far-removed as “Lady Bird” and “Dune,” gives the performance of his career and the Broadway season. He makes the complicated Walter a millions things at once — adorable, frightening, calculating, indifferent, reserved, commanding, a stand-up comic, a boozer — that combine into one indomitable theatrical force. It’s not the sort of showy, speechifying role that we usually laud out of habit. Often, Walter simply watches on. But as played by Henderson, he’s a man you won’t soon forget.
Guirgis’ play is full of these piercing, inconclusive sub-plots and character portraits—an intricately composed feast of voices where everyone is more than an easy definition of good or bad, and the chorus of views and competing interests is really the melting pot of the city outside the theater, sieved and delivered with sharpened brio on stage. As New York gets quieter in these Christmas weeks, it may be the perfect time to hear those voices at full volume.
2014 | Off-Broadway |
Atlantic Theater Production Off-Broadway |
2015 | Off-Broadway |
Second Stage Theatre Production Off-Broadway |
2022 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2023 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Stephen McKinley Henderson |
2023 | Tony Awards | Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Stephen McKinley Henderson |
2023 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Between Riverside and Crazy |
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