Dialogue in sentences

For those of us on the outside, prison dramas rarely fail to hold us captive. The clang of metal bars, the powder-keg emotion, the numbing routine and the salty language can get our adrenaline pumping like Smarty Jones.

The probing and intense staging of Jesus Hopped the "A" Train at the Wilma Theater grabs the audience and plunges it headlong into a heavily secured New York City prison — and into the lives, fears, illusions and delusions of two quite different killers.

The play, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, attempts to explain the motivations behind the convicts’ actions and to explore the way in which prison, society and their backgrounds affect their attitudes.

The incredible anger felt by every one of the five characters is palpable and is the main characteristic of the play. It runs at a fast pace and by the end, despite much witty wisecracking, it leaves the audience feeling drained.

The title suggests that this could be a play about spirituality and redemption and, indeed, a good deal of it takes the form of long monologues — delivered by the two prisoners — regarding the nature of faith and God and their relationships to these concepts.

But Jesus‘ script is hardly fit for church. Just when you thought you’d heard every possible combination of the f-word, along comes the play’s opening sequence, featuring the profanity in configurations that had even the most staid of audience members shrieking with laughter.

Although this prison drama generates a lot of heat, I’m not sure whether it sheds much light; it is vividly written and emotionally portrayed, but in the end, it’s hard to see what Guirgis is getting at.

The play is set in Manhattan’s infamous Rikers Island prison, where first-time offender and recent arrival Angel Cruz awaits trial. Angel (Vaneik Echeverria) isn’t sure why he’s even in jail after shooting a cult preacher. As he explains to his lawyer, "All I did was shoot him in the ass. What the hell is attempted murder about that?"

The sect had kidnapped his best friend and Angel knew no other way to protest than by taking the law into his own hands. Unfortunately for him, the moneymaking preacher suffered a heart attack and died on the operating table. The defender appointed to take Angel’s case is a most unusual young lady with her own set of morals.

Running parallel to downtrodden Angel’s largely innocent, explicable deeds is the story of Lucius, played by John Douglas Thompson. This is a real murderer. He has admitted to killing no fewer than eight people and is suspected of killing many more. However, he has caught religion in a big way and now sounds so reasonable that his regular confessions are the only hint of his evil deeds.

During their exercise hour, Angel and Lucius engage in intense discussions about religion and prayer. At first, Angel feels superior because he accidentally killed one man, while Lucius cold-bloodedly slew eight. But those feelings erode as Lucius challenges him and the audience to consider that even the most grisly sinner cannot only be saved, but is worth saving.

Relatively little of the play is told in actual dialogue. More is revealed in a series of introspective monologues delivered directly to the audience, which are generally more revealing and convincing in their quiet intensity than the exploding, accusatory, expletive-drowned arguments among the killers and other characters.

The performances of Echeverria and Thompson are thoroughly captivating. Their moments of quarreling or comforting each other within their respective holding cells are never less than electric — a chemistry whose catalyst is often their sadistic guard, played to a fine point by Lindsay Smiling.

Scenic designer Anne Patterson has expressed the play’s heart with a fenced-in, razor-wired setting that facilitates action while amplifying meaning.

Intellectually, the play is a muddle; even its element of protest against the iniquities of the American penal system pales beside a work such as Tennessee Williams’s Not About Nightingales. But, judged simply as a series of scenes for actors, it has a moment-to-moment vitality well realized in Blanka Zizka’s sure handed-direction.

The profane language, depiction of the grim realities of prison life and the blood-bloom intensity of the imagery make Jesus Hopped the "A" Train a difficult ride.

It is, however, a play in which the writer seems to be wrestling with his own private demons rather than coming to any public conclusions.

Jesus Hopped the "A" Train
Through Sunday
Wilma Theater
Broad and Spruce streets
Tickets: $9-$48
215-546-7824
www.wilmatheater.org