137 (2019-2020): Review: HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN (seen December 18, 2019)

“No Saint without a Past, No Sinner without a Future”

There are 8 million stories in the naked city and, proportionately, a good number of them are in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven. This rich, rambling, if undisciplined new play, coproduced by the Atlantic and LAByrinth Theater Companies, is the latest from the rambunctious pen of the always exciting Guirgis, whose raw prose and colorful underclass types occupy such rippling works as Between Riverside and Crazy and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train.  

Patrice Johnson Chevannes, Elizabeth Canavan, Benja Kay Thomas, Pernell Walker, Victor Almanzar, Liza Colón-Zayas, Andrea Syglowski, Neil Tyrone Pritchard, Wilemina Olivia-Garcia, Sean Carvajal, Kara Young, Viviana Valeria, Esteban Andres Cruz. All photos: Monique Carboni.

Halfway Bitches . . . is an ensemble dramedy with 18 actors (two of whom play two roles each), energetically directed by John Ortiz, artistic director of the LAByrinth. It’s set in Hope House, a struggling, Upper West Side, government-funded, halfway house for female substance abusers, prostitutes, ex-cons, and the like, run by Miss Rivera (Elizabeth Rodriguez). She’s a no-nonsense, overworked administrator who handles the pressures of a failed marriage, an alienated daughter, lack of funding, and her difficult residents by knocking back slugs from a bottle in her desk drawer.

Elizabeth Canavan, Liza Colón-Zayas, Kara Young, Pernell Walker.

Those residents, each of whom has his or her own story, include Sarge (Liza Colón-Zayas), a fierce, PTSD- and bipolar-afflicted Iraq war vet, fighting to hold on to Bella (Andrea Syglowski), a bosomy stripper burdened with a baby, a needle habit, and a brutal husband, Nicky (Greg Keller); a Nigerian social worker, Mr. Mobo (Neil Tyrone Pritchard), fornicating with a single-mother resident called Munchies (Pernell Walker); and a priest, Father Miguel (David Anzuelo), who combines humane wisdom with martial arts expertise and a surprising attitude toward the sixth commandment. His motto: “No saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

Pernell Walker, Victor Almanzar.

Kristina Poe, Gregg Keller.

We also meet Wanda Wheels (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), a wheelchair-bound invalid with a theatrical past and a grand manner, who once knew Noam Chomsky; Rockaway Rosie (Elizabeth Canavan), white, middle-aged, and alcoholic; Happy Meal Sonia (Wilemina Olivia-Garcia), a mentally ailing mother, and Taina (Viviana Valeria), her loving daughter fighting—despite resistance—to help her; Venus Ramirez (Esteban Andres Cruz), a kind, transsexual addict, who insists on the right to be in a woman’s institution; Betty Woods (Kristina Poe), an overweight, smelly, abused, self-published author of a pornographic novel, who has an exquisitely sensitive scene with Venus; and so on. Including a goat.

Sean Carvajal, Kara Young.

For a little less than three hours, Guirgis weaves his many strands together within a plot of sorts about the threatened demise of this home for the dispossessed. His goal is to illuminate the human hearts of people whose existence most of us ignore, like the homeless panhandlers we see on the streets and subways. With few exceptions, these people, annoying—or even violent—as they may be, come off in the playwright’s hands as lovable eccentrics, even their frequent outbursts of anger (shouting is a default for many of them), somehow failing to turn us against them.

Elizabeth Canavan, Kara Young.

This being a Guirgis play, they also speak with remarkable expressivity, some capable of stringing together assaults of poetic profanity that most better-educated people could never achieve. One, in fact, a 15-year-old called Little Melba Diaz (Kara Young), recites a rap poem she’s written, which contains the title Guirgis gives his play. In it she recounts her escaping from foster care, her disastrous experiences with the opposite sex, her becoming pregnant and homeless, and a litany of other misfortunes that might have led to suicide had she not met Father Miguel.

Victor Almanzar, Esteban Andres Cruz.

Elizabeth Canavan, Patrice Johnson Chevannes, Kara Young, Pernell Walker.

The Linda Gross Theater's stage is occupied by Narelle Sisson’s expansive, two-story set, effectively lit by Mary Louise Geiger, showing the institution’s shabby interior, with its glass-doored entrance at one side. Between the front row and the stage is the narrow sidewalk area (a Siamese connection attached to the wall) where the residents hang out. A bench and street lamp are placed down left. Alexis Forte has contributed the authentic-looking costumes, and Elisheba Ittoop the proper background sound and music.

Esteban Andres Cruz, Andrea Syglowski.

There being so many vivid performances it’s difficult to select any for special commendation. If I had to single out a single actor, it would be Patrice Johnson Chevannes, whose elegant voice, diction, and manner perfectly limn the declining, anorexic, alcoholic Wanda. But that’s really not fair to the powerful work of Colón-Zayas, Cruz, Poe, . . . and, well, everybody else!

Liza Colón-Zayas, Andrea Syglowski.

Liza Colón-Zayas, Elizabeth Rodriguez.

Stephen Adly Guirgis takes no half-measures in Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, a title that, given the sympathy with which he depicts his wounded characters, hopefully describes their destiny.

Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven

Atlantic Theater Company/Linda Gross Theater

336 W. 20^th St., NYC

Through January 5