‘Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train’ rides to hellish Rikers Island jail

Just a few minutes after seeing Eclipse Theatre’s electrifying revival of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” — the initial entry in the company’s three-play season devoted to the playwright — I happened to turn on my car radio to listen to CBS’ “60 Minutes.” I was just in time to catch a blistering expose about the latest outrage at New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison — “home” to 10,000 inmates who are in various stages of the legal process and various states of mental and physical health.

Very little in this horrific report surprised me, in light of Guirgis’ play (an early entry in his career when it opened Off Broadway in 2000 under the direction of Philip Seymour Hoffman), which captured the infernal workings of that place in the way only theater can do. It is as scorching and multifaceted as any documentary.

The year is 2000. The place (and Kevin Scott’s set is ideal) is the heavily caged-in yard of a special 23-hour lockdown wing of “protective custody” on Rikers Island. It is there that we meet Lucius Jenkins (D’Wayne Taylor, whose manic riffs and aerobic exploits are equally fearsome), a 42-year-old man who has murdered eight people and is awaiting extradition to Florida where he can receive the death penalty. New to his adjoining “cage” is Angel Cruz (Johnathan Nieves, a charismatic young actor whose quicksilver shifts from rage to poetry are breathtaking), a 23-year-old New Yorker accused of attempted murder.

Jenkins, who claims to have found God — and who engages in furious workout routines while reciting passages from the Bible — might or might not be schizophrenic, or perhaps is just a brilliant charlatan. Cruz is a brainy, fiery, boyish fellow who has seen quite a lot of life, and has a moral code of his own. He is full of contempt for religion. In fact, he shot (without the intention to kill) the Reverend Kim, the money-making leader of a corrupt “church,” because the man inculcated his closest friend into what is clearly a cult. And all Cruz’s efforts to “liberate” that friend have failed. Prison is his worst nightmare, and he is very alone, and very vulnerable. But he also is unapologetic.

The two corrections officers who patrol the yard could not be more different, and they, too, have their particular moral codes. Valdez (Christian M. Castro in a fiery, bravely unlikable turn) is a sadistic man who loathes Jenkins, will do everything possible to prevent him from becoming the subject of a television documentary, and uses the most brutal methods to counter his “uppity” resistance. He initially demonstrates only a bit less contempt for the painfully withdrawn Cruz, though ultimately he shows a hint of pity. On the other hand D’Amico (a fascinating and wily portrayal by Zach Bloomfield) is a more empathetic guard, even supplying Lucius with Oreos and cigarettes, and (though I will not disclose this) something more.

And then there is Cruz’s public defender, Mary Jane (Elizabeth Birnkrant is nothing short of perfection here), who becomes far too emotionally involved with his case. Determined to save Cruz, she engages in a good number of questionable techniques to exonerate him, all of which result in disaster. It doesn’t help that Reverend Kim eventually dies on the operating table.

Along with its meditation on crime and punishment and moral responsibility, it is the complex, and never-sentimentalized relationship that develops between Jenkins and Cruz that is most crucial here, with Guirgis supplying the men with ferocious arguments. Such playwrights as Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet and Miguel Pinero, among many others, have explored this theme of men behind bars. But under the fiery, no-holds-barred direction of Anish Jethmalani —whose five stellar actors are giving uniformly scorching performances — the human and legal issues explored here are more nuanced, and have the power to shake you to the bones.

NOTE: Eclipse continues its all-Guirgis season with “Our Lady of 21st Street (opening in July) and “The Little Flower of East Orange” (opening in November). This summer, Steppenwolf Theatre will produce the playwright’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, “Between Riverside and Crazy.”