<em>Between Riverside and Crazy</em>: ACT Opens 49th Season With a Tough, Humane Pulitzer Prize Drama

Carl Lumbly as Walter "Pops" Washington: a troubled and angry ex-cop

Photos by Kevin Berne

The past weighs heavily on Walter "Pops" Washington, the angry, suspicious ex-cop whose rage and stubbornness propel the fierce Between Riverside and Crazy, which opened American Conservatory Theater's 49th season a few days ago.

His obsessions are fully understandable, even if his responses are harder to handle.

Pops, portrayed with torrents of fury and flashes of gentleness by the marvelous Carl Lumbly, had patrolled New York's streets for 30 years before he was shot while off duty, by another cop. Pops is black; the shooter was white. Eight years later he still hasn't settled a suit against the city, convinced that a white man would have gotten a better deal.

Pops lives in a spacious and once-elegant apartment on posh Riverside Drive, fighting efforts by his landlord to push him and his extended family out of their rent-controlled home. A new tenant would pay far, far more than his $1,500 a month.

And Pops is a widower who can't get over the death of his wife some six months earlier, around Christmas. He spends much of his time sitting in her wheelchair; he refuses to take down the decorated tree that still stands in the living room.

To handle those turns of fate, Pops drinks, at any and every time of day. And he explodes at anyone or any event that strikes him wrong, but beneath that fury is the capacity for redemption.

Lumbly and Elia Monte-Brown as Lulu: a bit of teasing never hurt

He is one of seven characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis's play, which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama, but he provides the fuel that energizes all.

Three others share the apartment: his petulant son, Junior, an ex-con whose current income seems to come from illicit sources; Junior's ostentatiously sexy girlfriend, Lulu, who flaunts her anatomy in skimpy tops and shorts; and a buddy of Junior's, Oswaldo, who seems to have adopted Pops as a surrogate father while struggling with the challenges of drug rehab and rejection by his own father.

Samuel Ray Gates is Junior, Elia Monte-Brown is Lulu and Lakin Valdez is Oswaldo, and all deliver impeccable performances.

Their interplay crackles with obscenity and cynicism -- standard elements in Guirgis's award-winning examinations of American life at its gritty edges -- but not necessarily with hostility. Beneath the raw surfaces, flickers of compassion and concern slip through.

In contrast, visitors display little hostility, at least at first.

One is a police detective named Audrey (Stacy Ross), who served with Pops before he was forced into retirement. She seems genuinely concerned with the older man's life and health. That sincerity isn't shared by her fiancee, Dave (Gabriel Marin), whose expressions of concern come with ulterior motives.

He's an ambitious police lieutenant who drops such names as Rudy Giuliani and admits to craving more exalted status in the department. If he can convince, force or blackmail Pops to accept the settlement, it would look great on his resumé. Both men are hard bargainers and their resolution is one of the play's many surprises.

A Church Lady (Catherine Castellanos) prays to lift a flagging spirit

But none of its turns and twists comes with so much surprise as the visit by a woman identified only as the Church Lady (Catherine Castellanos). I won't even hint at how her vivacity and tenaciousness raise Pops from his doldrums, but I can say that she brings down the house with amazement and laughter. The role is small, but Castellanos makes it unforgettable.

Irene Lewis provided the expert direction and Christopher Barreca designed the set: high-ceilinged rooms that suggest the apartment's faded opulence and sliding wall panels that take the action outdoors.

Between Riverside and Crazy runs through Sept. 27 in American Conservatory Theater's Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$100, from 415-749-2228 or act-sf.org