Ruth Leon… Pocket Theatre Review

Between Riverside and Crazy – Hampstead Theatre

​This excellent play is one that loses something in translation from New York to London because the crucial but inanimate object at its centre – a rent-controlled Manhattan apartment – doesn’t have a UK equivalent. To be the possessor of a lease for one of New York’s diminishing supply of reasonably priced apartments is to be a king of the real estate world, especially as you have to do something egregious to have it taken away from you. In principle, and in fact, a rent-controlled apartment is for life. Everybody wants one. Pops has one.

Danny Sapani here reinforces his position as one of our great actors by jumping straight from playing King Lear at the Almeida to playing Pops, a retired NY police officer whose rundown but highly desirable Riverside Drive apartment is the home in question.

It houses him and his disreputable son, Junior, who sells stolen goods, a drug-crazed  friend of Junior’s who has moved in and become a fixture, Junior’s prostitute girlfriend, and more or less anyone in the neighbourhood who needs a place to sleep. Pops himself isn’t all that law-abiding either, having lied about a murky incident in his past where he was shot by a white officer and is now demanding a vast sum from the city in compensation.

Any and all of these count as the egregious things you have to do to get evicted from your rent-controlled apartment and the city authorities are trying hard to evict Pops but, despite many threats, a drug-fuelled episode, and heavy interference from the police, the authorities, and his family, Pops is going nowhere. Unless, of course, someone makes it worth his while.

Stephen Adly Guirgis wrote this play from his own experience of a similar apartment and set of chaotic living conditions in which he still lives, and Michael Longhurst has directed it with the deftness and humour it deserves.

Danny Sapani’s Pops is a wonderful characterisation and he is joined by a splendid set of actors who are equally flexible in their various roles as extended family, tormentors, police officers and the mysterious lady from the church who eats all the cookies.

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