Danny Sapani in Between Riverside… [Johan Persson]

SINCE his wife died, Black ex-cop Walter ‘Pops’ Washington (Danny Sapani) has filled his palatial, rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive, one of Manhattan’s most desirable areas, with a surrogate family.

These include Walter’s son, Junior (Martins Imhangbe), girlfriend Lulu (Tiffany Gray) and friend Oswaldo (Sebastian Orozco), a recovering drug addict who, like Junior, has spent time in prison.

Walter is pursued by his landlords, who are trying to evict him so they can increase the rent, and the New York City Police Department, who want him to drop the lawsuit he’s taken out against them, after he was shot by a white rookie cop while drinking off-duty in a bar.

His former colleague Detective Audrey O Connor (Judith Roddy) and her fiancé Lieutenant Dave Caro (Daniela Lapaine) try to persuade Walter to give up his claim against the city, but he has other ideas.

Walter also has to deal with the lady from the local church (Ayesha Antoine) and walk the dog. Is it any wonder he’s turned to whiskey and comfort food?

A Broadway hit in 2014, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but the script is busy with themes of racism, real estate, guilt, grief and redemption and it occasionally feels as though he is trying to tackle too much.

Nevertheless, the performances are solid in Michael Longhurst well-paced production. Sapani is excellent as the flawed patriarch, despite fluffing his lines a couple of times as he settled into his part, and Guirgis’s lively dialogue is spot-on.

Until June 15
hampsteadtheatre.com/