Jesus Hopped the A Train: 4 1/2 Stars with Three Tokens

Whatever San Francisco Playhouse is eating, we want some. One production after another jumps off the stage and grabs the audience by the throat. This season we've already had 'Reckless' and 'Three Seconds in the Key' and 'The Ride Down Mt. Morgan,' all first-class, well acted and tightly directed productions, and now Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'Jesus Hopped the A Train' takes us through nearly two hours of subway-crunching drama and leaves us jumping up to beg for more.

Man! You're going to have to look long and hard to remember two more perfectly cast leads than Carl Lumbly as Lucius Jenkins and Daveed Diggs as Angel Cruz, both killers, both incarcerated, both guilty of their crimes and yet...you like them, you want them to get out of jail...well, maybe Lucius could go live in a far-away neighborhood if not on another planet.



As always, Susi Damilano is perfect as Angel's lawyer and Gabriel Marin, as the sadistic prison guard Valdez, would steal the show if it weren't for Lumbly and Diggs. But the real star is playwright Guirgis's dialogue, helped along by Bill English's crisp direction. It is clear that Guirgis has never matched the power of 'Jesus Hopped the A Train,' his first success (written in 2001), not even with last year's good-but-not-on-this-level 'Our Lady of 121st Street.'

Four smashes in a row. You've got to wonder how far SF Playhouse can run this string?

The Great Plotnik Theater Awards Division awards 'Jesus Hopped the A Train' 4 1/2 stars with three tokens: one for Valdez's smirk, one for Lucius's barely constrained fury while doing leg kicks -- Lucius and Valdez make us want to run for our lives -- and one for Daveed Diggs who has honed in on Angel's sense of terrified bravado. Him, we want to hug.

Go see this show. You've got until April 8.