Between Riverside and Crazy on Broadway Tickets

By: Stephen Adly Guirgis
Producer: Second Stage Theater
Director: Austin Pendleton
Cast list: Stephen McKinley Henderson (as Pops), Common (as Junior), Rosal Colón (as Lulu), Victor Almanzar (as Oswaldo), Elizabeth Canavan (as Detective Audry O’Connor), Maria-Christina Oliveras (as Church Lady), Gary Perez (as Lieutenant Caro)
Lighting: Keith Parham
Sound: Ryan Rumery
Design: Walt Spangler
Costume: Alexis Forte
Other info: Original music by Ryan Rumery

Step into the spacious, rent-controlled apartment of Walter "Pops" Washington and his various couch-surfing guests in Between Riverside and Crazy. The digs are cushy, but otherwise, they’re all struggling just to survive, and their community is their lifeline.

“Pops” once had it all: a happy marriage, a successful career in the NYPD, and that Upper West Side pad that anyone would die for. Now, his wife is gone. He's spent eight years fighting a lawsuit against the NYPD over the gunshot wound that wrongfully ended his career. And the fate of his rent-controlled oasis hangs in the balance. Between Riverside and Crazy is a story about people just trying to make it through, and hoping for a little redemption.

Between Riverside and Crazy is Guirgis's second play on Broadway. His first, The Motherfucker with the Hat, premiered in 2011, starring Chris Rock and Bobby Cannavale, and earned six Tony nominations including Best Play. Many of his plays have premiered off Broadway, and between 2000 and 2019, he's had 11 Off-Broadway productions at major theatre companies like The Public Theater, Signature Theatre, and Second Stage Theater.

Between Riverside and Crazy premiered at Atlantic Theater Company in 2014 and got an encore run at Second Stage Theater (plus a Pulitzer Prize for Drama) a year later. The 2022 Broadway premiere recreates the acclaimed Off-Broadway production, with the same director and much of the original cast.

What to Watch For

• All but one of the original cast members from Between Riverside and Crazy off Broadway are reprising their roles in the Broadway production. Tony nominee Ron Cephas Jones is the one actor not returning; Common is making his Broadway debut in Cephas’s role.
• Common, the one new cast member of Between Riverside and Crazy on Broadway, earned Oscar and Grammy Awards for co-writing the song "Glory" from the film Selma, and an Emmy Award for writing the song "Letter To The Free" for the documentary 13th. He is only a Tony Award away from an EGOT, which only 17 people have achieved.
• Guirgis often uses religious imagery in his otherwise irreverent plays: Some of his other works are titled The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, and Our Lady of 121st Street. Between Riverside and Crazy isn't a religious title, but there are religious themes and a character called Church Lady.
• Between Riverside and Crazy shares themes with Guirgis's most recent play, 2019's Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven. Both plays feature downtrodden characters on the Upper West Side; Halfway Bitches takes place in a halfway house in the neighborhood. Three actors — Elizabeth Canavan, Victor Almanzar, and Liza Colón-Zayas — have also performed in both.
• In recent years, Second Stage has produced the hit Broadway run of Take Me Out, the pre-Broadway run of Dear Evan Hansen, and Harvey Fierstein's Tony-winning Torch Song.