Eight years before the pivotal summer depicted in Between Riverside and Crazy, Walter “Pops” Washington, a 30-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, sat drinking in a bar at 6 AM. Soon thereafter a uniformed officer entered the place and unloaded all six of his revolver’s bullets into Washington. Washington, who’s African-American, sued, and since then the proud, angry, preternaturally defiant man has refused multiple settlement offers from the city, because they all stipulated that no one was at fault in the shooting—and Washington insists the officer called him a nigger before opening fire, although no one can corroborate his allegation. Thus he squanders endless time and money on a case we’re told he surely can’t win, jeopardizing his health, his financial stability, and ultimately his ability to remain in the rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive where he’s lived since 1978.
And so it goes throughout Guirgis’s two-hour-plus drama, where most things are provocative and potent but never quite convincing. Junior has moved into his father’s apartment, ostensibly to take care of the old man, and it seems Guirgis wants to turn their iconic relationship—the insurgent son taking on the impotent patriarch—into a core dramatic arc. But Junior does little except seethe over past resentments or profess his love and admiration for his father, then run off for a long weekend in Baltimore for no useful reason. The father-son relationship is outlined rather than developed, making the pair’s final showdown late in act two largely inconsequential.
Through 8/21: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, steppenwolf.org, $52-$86.
