Between Riverside and Crazy Review

Over the past decade or so, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis has become the foremost interpreter of NYC’s Upper West Side — actually, make that Upper, Upper West Side, so you don’t conjure dewy-eyed visions of the Metropolitan Opera or Juilliard. And the language in his works would make a society matron blush (his description of spitting on a certain part of a nun’s anatomy in his most famous play, the Tony-nominated eyebrow-raiser The Motherf—er With the Hat, still widens these eyes). But Between Riverside and Crazy, playing at Off Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company through Aug. 16, is quite possibly his most accomplished piece to date. And compared to his other street operas, it’s almost cuddly in its intimate family-living backdrop. In this case, cuddly also entails booze, drugs, and prostitutes. Like all of Guirgis’ work, Riverside is populated with salty, blue-collar New Yorkers with a penchant for trouble. Walter (the divine Stephen McKinley Henderson) is a diabetic, heart-plagued, wounded ex-cop who subsists on a steady intake of booze and pie as breakfast food. He lives in a spacious apartment with his son, Junior (Ray Anthony Thomas), a former felon, and Junior’s buxom girlfriend (Rosal Colon), an accounting student who may also be a lady of the evening. Walter also takes in a recovering addict (Victor Almanzar) shakily trying to live a straight life.