About the Play:

Riff Raff is a full-length drama by Laurence Fishburne. Mike and Billy have three kilos of smack, blood on their hands and New York's biggest drug lord on their tail. As the net tightens and the tension builds, something has to give. Riff Raff is a gritty look at the drug game and the lengths people go to to escape poverty.

Riff Raff is a gritty urban story of a robbery gone sour and friendships betrayed. It's Halloween night. Mike ("20/20") and his half brother, Billy ("Torch"), have retreated to an abandoned crack den on the Lower East Side in the aftermath of a drug heist gone sour. Torch has just killed one of the henchmen of the neighbourhood's reigning drug lord. Having planned no means of escape, Mike summons his former colleague Tony ("The Tiger") to help them out of this jam. The question is who can be trusted when brothers by blood and brothers by association combine in a do or die situation? What follows is a continuing three-way confrontation in which guns are drawn, allegiances shifted and secrets uncovered. Themes of lost brotherhood and friendship are evident, while the bleakness of each of the characters' lives is chillingly suggested. The jittery Torch recounts the fight that led to the killing of the small-time punk with a harrowing, perplexed sense of detachment. Mike recounts a heavy-breathing date with a woman so hot she would look good even "if you dressed her up in garbage bags and put TV dinners on her head." As the play races toward its climax, Tony recites a flashy, epic jailhouse poem that is both cynical and romantically heroic, and it touches the very heart of each of the characters' shared sense of delusion. Riff Raff is a gritty, intense and engaging tale of addiction, revenge, relationships and facing the demons within.

The critically acclaimed Riff Raff marked the playwriting debut of one of Hollywood's most exciting and versatile actors. It premiered in Los Angeles at Hollywood's Theatre Geo in 1994; in New York City at Off-Broadway's acclaimed Circle Repertory in 1995; in Canada at Vancouver's Havana Café in 2001, and in the U.K. at East London's Arcola Theatre in 2010. The play has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 male

What people say:

"Mr. Fishburne is surprisingly and effectively understated, with scalding bubbles of anxiety breaking through a surface of a numbed calm." — New York Times

"Fishburne has a talent and a quality…[he] possesses one of the vital requirements of a playwright – a good ear for the things people say and the way they say them." — New York Post

"Riff Raff ... has the high energy and tight focus of a '90s film noir. ...By the time the script ratchets down, Fishburne has shown how these urban desperadoes are forced to accept their grim destiny." — Los Angeles Times

About the Playwright:

Laurence Fishburne is an American actor, playwright, producer, screenwriter, and film director. He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in film, television and theatre having worked in over 70 projects in all performance mediums. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy and CSI.