Lynx Performance Reviews: How I Learned to Drive Dutchman Crave The Exonerated In Arabia We'd All Be Kings Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train House of Blue Leaves

Reviews for Jesus Hopped the "A" Train  

"Critic's Pick!" - San Diego Union Tribune
By Anne Marie Welch, Theatre Critic, San Diego Union Tribune

As prison dramas go, this one’s a killer. Angel Cruz, a poor Puerto Rican, isn’t sure why he’s in jail after pointing a gun at Reverend Kim, the cultic minister who’s brainwashed his best friend. “All I did was shoot him in the ass,” he explains to his court-appointed attorney. But when the Reverend dies unexpectedly of a heart attack, Angel lands in the lock-down unit of the infamous Riker’s Island in New York. He’s in solitary for 23 hours a day; the other hour is spent airing out in a rooftop cage, adjacent to Lucius, a “superstar” born-again serial killer. When we first see Angel, he’s naked, curled in a fetal ball, weeping, wailing and trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to say the Lord’s Prayer. Religion is central to "Jesus Hopped the A Train," but it’s only one thing playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis has on his mind.

Guirgis, the Irish/Egyptian darling of New York, whom the Times declared“the best American playwright under 40,” based the play on his own experience. He had a close friend who joined a cult. In a joint effort with the boy’s brother and father, he tried to kidnap and de-program his buddy. But the kid never left the sect, and remains ensconced in it today. Guirgis linked his resultant anger to his lapsed-Catholic re-assessment of God. He had intimate knowledge of his characters and their milieu, having attended school in Harlem, and having spent five years as a violence prevention counselor in prisons just like Riker’s. His dialogue is amazingly real, his language incredibly raw (one person counted 82 uses of the f-word in the first five minutes of the play – filling in as every possible part of speech!). When the play started circulating abroad, having scored big at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Steppenwolf Theatre and Off Broadway, and snagging an Olivier nomination as the Best New Play of 2002, Guirgis quipped that, in Finnish, the f-word has three syllables, which could add 20 minutes to the play!

The gritty, harrowing piece concerns faith and morality, desperation and dishonesty, the legal and prison systems -- and becoming a man, taking responsibility for your life and your acts. The dichotomies addressed are guilt and innocence, damnation and redemption, incarceration and freedom and just plain good vs. evil. Guirgis layers his visceral narrative with equal parts humor and knife-edge emotion. Angel is an anxious, confused, conflicted young man. He doesn’t know who he is or what he wants. His principled public defender wants him to lie to save his skin. His warden sneers that he’ll never get out. His ‘prison buddy’ talks about guilt and salvation. There’s anger and disappointment in every character, even the well-meaning, nice-guy guard who befriends Lucius. At the end, there is no clear or simple resolution. Guirgis leaves us with ambiguities galore. Lucius is unequivocally guilty of murder, but he believes his religion will save him; Angel is innocent of murderous intent, but without faith he is rooted in despair. Lucius attacks television and drugs as addictions society imposes on the populace to pacify them, but he’s similarly sucked in by the Bible, and he ultimately returns to his cocaine and heroin habits. Angel has a sneaking suspicion that Jesus saved him from being splattered by the A train when playing on the tracks with his buddy as a child. Religion is what makes the cruel prison existence bearable for Lucius, yet it’s also the source of Angel’s friend’s abduction. When Angel finally gets his day in court, whether through Lucius’ indoctrination or his own desperation, he turns to the Lord, to shocking effect. Whatever you make of this forceful, provocative play, you mustn’t miss the spellbinding Lynx Theatre production.

Jeremiah Maestas is marvelous -- pitiful, passionate, volatile -- as Angel, a tough but basically good young man who suffers for his one act of righteous indignation. Maestas’ emotions turn on a dime, and he’s a powerful onstage force. Mark Broadnax is thoroughly charismatic as Lucius– handsome, macho, self-assured, buff and athletic, definitive in his beliefs and his self-exoneration -- the perfect foil for Angel’s uncertainly and searching anxiety. Their fiery interactions crackle with energy Watching their every move is Denton Davis as Valdez, the cynical, sadistic warden. Davis is terrifying in his unflinching cruelty, the contemptuous master of his little prison-ward fiefdom. Gerard Maxwell makes a couple of brief, sputtering, but poignant appearances as D’Amico, the affable guard who genuinely likes Lucius and brings him goodies from home. Then there’s Mary Jane Hanrahan, the most enigmatic and ill-defined character in the play. She’s the feisty, burned-out Irish Catholic attorney who will do anything to prove Angel’s innocence – even after he’s inadvertently confessed to her – which could jeopardize her career. De Anna Driscoll gives a convincing and compelling performance, though the character is substantively and dramaturgically weak. By any measure, this is a stellar ensemble, tautly directed by Al Germani, who also designed the stark set and lighting. This striking piece of theater keeps you riveted -- 115 minutes of ferocious, breath-holding, tooth-clenching drama.
- Pat Launer, KPBS San Diego Theatre Scene

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In a stark, probing production directed by Al Germani, five San Diego Actors give intense, fiercely focused performances like Chicago’s Steppenwolf Company once delivered.  A high profile staging of work by the gritty and philosophical urban playwright, Stephen Aldy Guirgis, is long overdue here. 

In his “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” at Germani’s Lynx Performance Theatre, young Jeremiah Maestas and charismatic Mark Broadnax evoke bone crushing emotion as a pair of murderers seeking redemption at Rikers Island.  The atmosphere is as much Dostoyevsky as the slammer, and with DeAnna Driscoll, Denton Davis,  and Gerard Maxwell also on hand, the action, both metaphysical and visceral, is terrifying and compelling.

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Good theater is where you find it. For the next three weekends that means an industrial park just past the Costco in Rose Canyon.

There, three San Diego actors are giving intense, fiercely focused performances in the prison drama "Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Jeremiah Maestas, DeAnna Driscoll and Max Broadnax create such bone-crushing emotion, you may think you're seeing Chicago's old Steppenwolf company, or have landed deep in actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's downtown New York.

Hoffman first championed Guirgis' gritty and philosophical work; he directed "Jesus" off-Broadway in 2000, then took it to London for an acclaimed run. A high-profile staging of this gifted, ambitious young writer is overdue here. Guirgis gives actors roles to die for, and in the Lynx Performance production directed by Al Germani, they go straight to the kill.

The mind-teasing drama looks at a pair of killers, a veteran and a newbie, incarcerated at Rikers Island. The lights come up on a terrified Angel Cruz (Jeremiah Maestas) curled in the fetal position. Naked and shivering, he can't get his voice to go past the word "hallowed" in The Lord's Prayer. Angel's locked up for shooting Rev. Kim, a cult leader who brainwashed Angel's best friend Joey; Angel aimed for the man's butt, he keeps insisting. Coiled in upon himself, then exploding, Maestas conjures a smart, loyal, angry kid in so much pain you want to turn away.

Even more fearsome is the rangy, charismatic Broadnax as Lucius, up on eight counts of murder, fighting extradition to Florida where the death penalty awaits. This imposing, radiant psychopath has found Jesus, the real thing it seems, and the discovery has gentled and calmed his tortured soul. Broadnax radiates certainty of redemption, and gives Lucius a charm more scary than the brutal crimes he recounts. The ambiguity of our response to him is one of the play's core strengths. Angel seeks redemption in the judicial system, embodied in the outsider lawyer Mary Jane (Driscoll, one of the city's best). We come to share her pride, which, yes, here "goeth before a fall."

Also on hand are a sadistic prison guard Valdez, played with convincing menace by Denton Davis, and the contrasting guard D'Amico (Gerard Maxwell), a more genial sort taken in by Lucius. The creepiest moment: dopey D'Amico's description of watching the execution of his"friend." Now he can make love to his wife again.

This stark bare bones production evokes the claustrophobic spiritual world of Dostoyesvky's "Crime and Punishment." Guirgis' language is visceral and precise, a poetic street talk from haunted, ever-surprising characters. The author stops just short of B-movie melodrama as they debate religion, guilt, responsibility, and redemption while sharply indicting an illogical prison system that's mostly about inflicting pain.

"Jesus" is more tightly focused than Guirgis' sprawling "Our Lady of 121st Street," yet both are more striking in individual scenes than in overall construction. But who cares, when there's so much emotional truth onstage, and such purity and integrity in the acting?

Playwright: Stephen Aldy Guirgis. Director, lighting, set: Al Germani.
Cast: Jeremian Maestas, Mark Broadnaxx, Denton Davis, Gerard Maxwell, Bill
Kehayias, De Anna Driscoll.

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The language of playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis' Jesus Hopped the "A" Train depicts a visceral journey through soul-tortured territory that leads the principal actors to their own redemption.

At the Lynx Performance Theatre space in a Rose Canyon industrial park, the drama unfolded with bravura direction by Al Germani.  His ensemble of actors heated up a cold, dark night and provided ecclesiastical illumination to the character's lost souls.

Angel Cruz is in the big jail house, awaiting trail for shooting Reverend Kim (cult leader), in the ass. Unfortunately for Angel, the Reverend died on the operating table and now he is charged with murder. Now in protective custody after multiple beatings from other inmates, Angel is now spending time at a 23 hour lockdown wing of protective custody. With him is Lucius Jenkins, a sociopathic serial killer awaiting extradition to Florida. Ironically Lucius has found God and wants to save Angel.

The language is the key to this fire-breathing, intense portrait of failed individuals looking for a way to right their lives. Like a sharp knife cutting through flesh, the principal actors all cut deep and fast into their well-scripted roles.

Mark Broadnax's Lucius was a restrained psychopathic scream for help. He looks to his newfound god for light after having ventured into nightmarish darkness for most of his life. The role was that dichotomy of unbelievable goodness and evil and Broaknax balanced the spirits of his character's inner soul in a beautifully nuanced, self-restrained portrayal.

Jeremiah Maestras' Angel, moving from his initially staged, fetal position, fights for his life with weapons of anger, frustration, and terrifying fear. You feel his pain as if you'd placed your hand in an open flame.

Balancing the production are finely focused roles by Denton Davis and Gerald Maxwell. DeAnna Driscoll's Mary Jane character was a fine anchor against the fierce, untamed, emotional drift of both Angel and Lucius that succeeded on many levels.

This production should have lines forming to catch these electrifying performances. Excellent drama awaits you at this black box theatre called Lynx; Go!

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Lynx Performance Theatre Artistic Director Al Germani stages Stephen Adly Guirgis' "Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train" at the Lynx Performance Theatre Space, a converted dance studio near the Morena Blvd. Costco.

Those who love the playwright's appalling poetry -- his "Our Lady of 123rd St." played earlier this season at Adams Avenue Studio -- will zoom to the Lynx production of "Jesus," a tense little ditty fraught with convicts, street language and a "bitch" attorney, fabulously played by DeAnna Driscoll.

Jeremiah Maestas turns in a multi-faceted performance as Angel, a punk arrested for shooting the cult leader who's brainwashed and stolen his best friend.

Germani's production is deliciously and sensuously detailed; for instance, he asks Maestas to finger, inhale, and slowly roll around a cigarette thrown to him by Lucius, the con in the next cell. A born-again, corn-rowed, schizophrenic serial killer, Lucius is played by Mark Broadnax, who has immense theatrical stature. He captures the fascination, machination and madness of the man. As Lucius' former guard (touchingly played by Gerard Maxwell) says, "I liked him."

Denton Davis portrays a brutal Riker's Island prison guard. Angel cowers and submits. Lucius merely taunts. It's a hard-hitting, fascinating, and gritty adult theatre; and yet, through these rude characters, we gain a certain, almost reverent and transcendent grace.

Definitely not for those who find street language offensive, this lickety-split E-ticket ride may be taken at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday or Sunday through December 12 only at Lynx Performance Space, 2653-R Ariane Dr. Directions and tickets ($15-$18) on the web at www.lynxperformance.com or phone (619) 280-2641.

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