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Exactly why that is and how it happens, even when things look their worst, is the subject of Stephen Adly Guirgis's play Between Riverside and Crazy, which has just reopened at the Second Stage Theatre. Though this production, which is directed by Austin Pendleton, started its life at the Atlantic Theater Company last summer, it's lost none of its sparking heat or cleverness as it's lingered in our current winter doldrums. Walter is a big part of the reason for that, but at least as responsible is Stephen McKinley Henderson, who plays him with warmth that comforts even as it sears your skin. Henderson shows us every side of a man we both love to hate and hate to love, and he does it without apology. You don't doubt for a minute that Walter's myriad contradictions resolve within his own head, even if they sometimes don't cohere outside. He can be a great father, and yet utterly relentless in dealing with Junior (Ron Cephas Jones), Junior's quasi-trampy squeeze Lulu (Rosal Colón), and the well-meaning self-help-oriented, but self-destructive Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar). He can be a true friend to his former partner, Audrey (Elizabeth Canavan), and her new fiancé, Dave (Michael Rispoli), while viciously rejecting their advice on finally closing up ties with the city he feels has cheated him for a decade. And he can easily reject religion while, um, welcoming the spiritual advances of the visiting "Church Lady" (Liza Colón-Zayas) who comes to rescue his languishing soul. As written, Walter is imbued with an unshakable sense of self—an apparently rare quantity, as everyone else in his life is either intentionally or incidentally deceptive about some crucial matter—and because Henderson amplifies that to its outermost limits, the man acquires a kind of deific nature that others recognize whether they want to or not. This is hardly to say that Walter's perfect; he hasn't forgotten the accident that's caused him his career, the losses he's suffered in fighting the system, or the secret guilt he carries that's tied up in both. But traditional concepts of right and wrong aren't so important when you're in charge of the moral universe. And Henderson's Walter is always, always that.
This comes at the expense of the other characters, which is where Between Riverside and Crazy loses some ground compared to Guirgis's previous works. Largely ensemble pieces, they present wider swaths of humanity and interpretations of truth than is the case here; this is a star vehicle that just isn't designed to feel like anything but. Pendleton does work well with the actors, and has for the most part staged the show efficiently on Walt Spangler's ever-revolving, multiroom set (though the motion does clamp down on tension or suspense at a couple of critical moments), but he can't impart an evenness and consistency to the work that's not present in the script. With the exceptions of Colón-Zayas, who can't overcome the flat silliness of her role (even though it inspires the wildest scene of the night: a baptism by a method that trasncends water by several dozen orders of magnitude), and Canavan, who sinks into Audrey's natural shrillness more than she did back into July, the performers are excellent fits for their roles, masters of the comedy and harsh drama alike that blend in with all these people facing different crossroads. The cast's one new member, Cephas Jones, is particularly good, bringing a soft-centered but hard-bitten manner to Junior that gives him plenty of room to maneuver in coming to terms with the good and the bad that's Dad. You can never have one without the other, but a major message of Between Riverside and Crazy is that you wouldn't want it that way even if you could. What makes Walter lovable is exactly the same thing that makes him hatable: his conviction and dedication to himself. He doesn't ignore or destroy his family and friends (he's beyond the point of being able to do that), but he's well aware that the life he's trying to wrap up is all he has, and is going to follow others' leads and get what he can from it. If others are going to let him call the shots, why not take advantage of it? It may not be the most feel-good moral imaginable, even if Henderson makes its purveyor a cuddly and insouciant one. But what Guirgis, Pendleton, Henderson, and probably Walter want you to remember is that it's not for an instant crazy.
Between Riverside and Crazy
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