Still mourning the departure of the groundbreaking Netflix series Orange Is the New Black? Have I got a play for you.
Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, now having its world premiere at Atlantic Theater Company, in a co-production with LAByrinth Theater Company, is set in and around the ironically named Hope House, a government-funded women’s shelter in New York City. It’s the sort of place many of the prison inmates in Orange could have found sanctuary, of a sort, at one point or another, and because the playwright is Stephen Adly Guirgis, the gritty authenticity with which the play’s characters are drawn is never in question.
From its opening salvo—a jarring, hilariously profane series of exchanges (many more follow) introducing a bipolar military veteran, a trans diva and an interdependent mother and daughter, among other residents—Halfway Bitches reminds us of its author’s gift for capturing the random cruelty and injustices life can impose, particularly on the underprivileged and disenfranchised, with crackling wit and defiant compassion. And while Guirgis has certainly written supple female characters in his previous work—some of them played by members of this cast—it’s exciting to see him bring that sensibility to a story focused on a community of women.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★★ review here.]
That said, at a recent preview performance, the play didn’t always seem as fluid or lyrical as the Pulitzer Prize winner’s better past efforts. This may have been due in part to substantial tweaking late in the preview period—though the superb actors, under the brisk guidance of LAByrinth’s co-founder and artistic director, John Ortiz, seemed unfazed by any last-minute cuts or changes. At worst, the retained dialogue can border on speechifying; no character bears the brunt of this occasional lapse more than the shelter’s dedicated, exhausted supervisor, Miss Rivera. Played by the luminous Elizabeth Rodriguez, an alumna of Orange and several Guirgis plays, this noble workaholic seems to exist chiefly to point out the inadequacies of our social support system. Lecturing a naive social worker or a Machiavellian politician’s aide, the character offers Rodriguez little opportunity to showcase her charisma or comedic gifts.
Guirgis channels his urgency into other characters more gracefully, emphasizing the individual stories contained in his typically rich assortment of human cast-offs while tracing the sometimes shaky camaraderie and conflicts between them, borne of empathy and anguish, love and survival instincts. The aforementioned vet, Sarge, is suffering from PTSD and capable of violent outbursts; the excellent Liza Colón-Zayas conveys her struggle to contain her ferocity, and also the tenderness she feels for her lover, Bella, a superficially tough, desperate stripper and single mom—played by Andrea Syglowski, revealing both qualities to wrenching effect—who shares her struggle to overcome addiction.
Bella finds something of a fellow spirit in Venus Ramirez, born biologically male, whose witty defiance of opponents—Sarge prominent among them—masks a weariness that seeps through in Esteban Andres Cruz’s wry, sensitive performance. We also meet Munchies (Pernell Walker, funny and fierce), another single mother in thrall to Sarge, though sexually more drawn to a male social worker, and Little Melba Diaz (an adorable, plucky Kara Young), a precocious teen who pours hard-luck horrors into hip-hop verse.
The men in Halfway Bitches are drawn sympathetically as well, and with nuance; even an abusive husband is clearly trying to grapple with his demons. As beleaguered social worker Mr. Mobo, who’s from Nigeria, Neil Tyrone Pritchard makes a wonderful straight man—in the comic sense—while David Anzuelo brings just the right balance of patience and passion to the role of Father Miguel, the Jesuit priest who assists Miss Rivera. And Sean Carvajal is a standout for his painfully tender portrait of Mateo, another teenager whose dying mother is a resident.
Several of the play’s most moving and movingly portrayed characters are, in fact, confronting mortality, or coming to terms too late with poor choices. Rockaway Rosie, a middle-aged woman who lost her life savings to a falsehearted lothario, is brought to devastating life by the marvelous Elizabeth Canavan, who masters the hesitant, circuitous speech patterns marking Rosie as a defeated woman. (In one uproarious scene, Rosie spills her sad story to the others while an oblivious Munchies shouts profanities at Mr. Mobo.) The dementia-addled Happy Meal Sonia (Wilemina Olivia-Garcia, heart-rending) clings to her daughter, Taina (a delicate, potent Viviana Valeria), suppressing Taina’s need to forge a life of her own.
Then there is the elegant, dissipated Wanda Wheels, played by a radiant Patrice Johnson Chevannes, presiding over the chaos and despair and determination to press on that fill day-to-day life at Hope House, from a wheelchair. Chugging booze from an emptied bottle of Ensure, Wanda regales her fellow survivors with tales of her past adventures with cultural and showbiz gliterrati, every so often spiking her stories with little pearls of wisdom, or hard truth.
“This place, it’s a refuge, not a destination,” Wanda tells Miss Rivera during one of their late-night chats, adding, “There isn’t a woman here who doesn’t wish she had a destination.” Halfway Bitches‘s rather abrupt, unsettling conclusion doesn’t give them, or us, much reason to believe there will be one any time soon. But as always, Guirgis finds not only dark humor but dignity in their struggle.
