By Deanna Dement Myers
Jesus Hopped the A Train – Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Directed by Haris Lefteri. Co-producers: Mark Stickler and Kristen Dattoli; Monica Bruno, Stage Manager; Michelle Aguillon, Stage Design; Douglas Gordon, Lighting Design; Jason Dawson, Sound Design; Anna Silva, Costume Design. Presented by the Hovey Players March 1-16. Tickets available at hoveyplayers.com
“How many Sons of God you know drive a Lexus?”
Kneeling on stage, a young man attempts to recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory. In a holding cell for twenty-three hours a day, Angel Cruz (Dominic Carter) is awaiting trial for the shooting of the Reverend Kim. The shooting was part of a botched plan to rescue his childhood friend who had been brainwashed and captured by Kim’s cult. Angel is frightened and angered by his incarceration, as this is basically his first criminal offense.
The one hour a day he is let out, Angel spends in another cage in the exercise yard. There he meets the charming and witty Lucius Jenkins (Arthur Williams III), an older man who shows him kindness and seeks to show him the way to Jesus’s love. Lucius is also a serial killer, a self-described paranoid schizophrenic who employs his charms on anyone he thinks can be of use to him, as he attempts to avoid extradition to Florida, where it is likely he will be executed.
On the minimally dressed stage, the two men create barriers between themselves with their words and silences. Their conversation tackles heavy moral and ethical topics, with Angel raging against God and the system, while Lucius wraps the Bible around him like a shield. The men are often menaced by the sadistic and cruel corrections officer, Valdez (the terrifying Bill Stambaugh), who seems to feel it is his duty and right to harass and demean them. “Don’t be a God-fearing man,” Valdez warns Lucius, “be a Valdez-fearing man.”
Alternating these scenes are ones where Angel and his court-appointed lawyer, Mary Jane (Jennifer Shea), discuss his actions and defense. In his sexist reluctance to consider Mary Jane as his lawyer, Angel makes an offhand statement about shooting the Reverend Kim in his generous behind. Even though Mary Jane knows this means she can’t properly defend him, Angel has touched something in Mary Jane, and she is determined to do anything to prove his innocence.
The characters in the play wrestle with the little wrong outweighing the greater good. None of the characters are as one dimensional as they could be in a traditional legal procedural drama. The script, though laced with profanity, is handled with a delicacy that highlights the humor and intelligence of each character. While this play was written in 2000, it is disheartening that the issues being presented are no better, and probably worse, than they were twenty years ago. Addiction, abuse, racism, and victimization are experienced in a way that makes it hard to clearly determine who is good and who is evil. Mary Jane, white, privileged, hardworking, pulled herself out of an impoverished, abusive situation with education and discipline, whereas Lucius, similarly abused and impoverished, turned to drugs and murdered eight people.
The actors in this play worked beautifully with the superbly written script by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis. The intimate staging allows the audience to feel the fear pouring off of Angel, and wince with Lucius as he suffers Valdez’s physical restraining “techniques”. Our sympathies are torn between the characters, as there is fear, deception, and vulnerability in each of them. We are confronted with our own uneasiness with how the criminal justice system treats black men, and what we are shown as the disadvantages these men have due to institutional racism.
God and justice can’t help these characters overcome what society has done to them and their own basic nature. Redemption is not a given, and we share their struggles to find grace. While it is not an easy play to see, make sure to catch this one before the run ends on March 16.
Wow, what an intense and gripping play. The reviewer really brings the story to life.
A terrific night of theater. Congrats Hovey! The silver tongued “devil,” Lucious, a serial murderer, gets in our heads and miraculously persuades us to take his side, just as he did his 8 victims. In the end, Angel is his 9th victim.
Great perspective. Lucius is certainly uses manipulation and persuasion to his advantage. Angel certainly was a victim of several people.