About the Play:

Between Riverside and Crazy has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

Between Riverside and Crazy is a full-length dark comedy by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Written with humour, tenderness, grit and wonderment, this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is about a man trying to maintain control as the world unravels around him. Between Riverside and Crazy is a nuanced, dark comedy about character and an incisive indictment of the systems that act upon us.

Between Riverside and Crazy looks at the slippery nature of justice, and the grit it takes to finally move on. Ex-cop and recent widower Walter "Pops" Washington and his newly paroled son Junior are barely holding on to one of the last great rent stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Pops has his hands (not to mention his apartment) full as he navigates a steady stream of sketchy houseguests and sweats out the impending verdict on his lingering lawsuit against the police department. But now, the NYPD is demanding his signature to close his outstanding lawsuit, the landlord wants him out, the liquor store is closed – and the church won't leave him alone. Between Riverside and Crazy is a celebration of the glorious contradictions that make up human nature.

Between Riverside and Crazy premiered in an acclaimed production Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theatre Company in 2014. It proved so popular, it was brought back in 2015 for a longer run at Second Stage Theatre near Times Square, winning the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2015 New York Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…somewhere south of cozy and north of dangerous, west of sitcom and due east of tragedy…a dizzying and exciting place to be…Blurring lines between the sacred and profane has always been a specialty of Mr. Guirgis…fresh and startling… Between Riverside and Crazy traffics in paradoxes, which is to say it deals with the walking contradictions that are human beings…Mr. Guirgis has a splendid ear for these various languages of deception." — The New York Times

"You can't always believe your eyes or ears during Stephen Adly Guirgis' vivid group portrait, Between Riverside and Crazy. [Guirgis'] dialogue is believable and lived-in." — New York Daily News

"This is the kind of rich, dynamic theater you almost never see anymore – fresh, savage and original. ... Like a stick of dynamite, it shines a laser light on the shadowy aspects of being a black cop, fighting the system, and never giving up or giving in." — New York Observer

"…wonderful…a genuine original, one that deserves to be seen by anyone hungry for a smart, exuberantly funny urban dramedy with a spirit as shrewd and forgiving as its motor-mouth language is wild and lush." — Newsday

"[A] love/hate song to this impossible town and its outlandish citizenry…Everyone's bound to be captivated by Guirgis's loudmouthed locals…[and] warm, rich dialect that comes right off the city streets." — Variety

"Between Riverside and Crazy explores, with both street-smart, sometimes-profane wit and disarming tenderness, the different ways in which we cling to, reject and exploit faith. Never one to settle for simple answers or snarky observations, Guirgis portrays his characters, and their twisting journeys, with humor and compassion." — USA Today

"Guirgis, like other storytellers who explore the sacred and the profane, is most interested in how grace transforms us. His empathetic, poetic tales of ex-cons, addicts, and other men whom society would label losers return us, again and again, to a world that Guirgis, by virtue of his particular religion – the church of the streets – illuminates with the bright and crooked light of his faith." — New Yorker

About the Playwright:

Stephen Adly Guirgis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. Born and raised in New York City by an Irish-American mother and Egyptian father, he studied theatre at the State University of New York in Albany before being recruited by John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman to join New York City's non-profit LAByrinth Theater Company, of which he later became a co-artistic director. His screenwriting credits have included TV shows such as NYPD Blue and The Sopranos, and his play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.