Three Plays: Our Lady of 121st Street / Jesus Hopped the A Train / In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings

by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Stephen Adly Guirgis has been hailed as one of the most promising playwrights at work in America today. A masterful poet of the downtrodden, his plays portray life on New York's hardscrabble streets in a manner both tender and unflinching, while continually exploring the often startling gulf between who we are and how we perceive ourselves. Gathered in this volume is his current off-Broadway hit, Our Lady of 121st Street, a comic portrait of the graduates of a Harlem Catholic school reunited at the funeral of a beloved teacher, along with his two previous plays: the philosophical jailhouse drama Jesus Hopped the A Train and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, an Iceman Cometh for the Giuliani era that looks at the effect of Times Square's gentrification on its less desirable inhabitants.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2003

About the author

Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Reviews

[Patrick Probably DNF · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good friend (and amazing writer) recommended this playwright to me in the late 1990s. And I finally got around to reading it this past month. How's that for follow-through? Now I feel like a huge idiot. I am a huge idiot. Because I should've devoured this collection sooner. Maybe in 2010. These three plays are goddamn great, with Xacto-sliced dialogue, conflicted characters, and grand themes of love, death, and forgiveness. But there are also sweet notes of pop culture here, and relevant criticism of the 90s, which might have turned me into a real Guirgis evangelist. Sooner, I mean. Because I just ordered "The Motherfucker with the Hat," and you're gonna have to hear about that one as well.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't a fan of Stephen Adly Guirgis' "Between Riverside and Crazy" and I still need to read "The Motherfucker with the Hat" but anyways, onto this collection of three plays.

Our Lady of 121st Street:
My favorite of the collection.Guirgis masterfully takes an ensemble of characters who all sort of have relationships with each other but are all connected to a recently deceased woman. Plenty of pain and laughs to be found with this.

Jesus Hopped the A Train:
The most popular piece in the collection but it starts to feel cyclical with characters accusing each other of the same arguments which starts to get tiring. Definitely worth a reread.

In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings:
The weakest. Similar style to "Our Lady of 121st Street" with an ensemble cast but Guirgis doesn't know what he's doing with the plot or characters and as a result, it fumbles badly at the ending.

[Beige Gurl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The balance between humour and tragedy and how Adly Guirgis weaves a story will forever have me screaming his praises. One of my favourite playwrights for dialogue and character. I wish I’d discovered him sooner. I’m reading everything now.

[Rachel Nortz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where do I even begin...
Currently I think Jesus Hopped the A Train is my favorite of this trilogy but we’re going to muddle on that!
Amazing as per usual.

[Judy! · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked jesus hopped the a train the most ^^ our lady of the 121st street was great as well but the amount of characters guirgis threw into that play kinda fried my brain @__@ the last play was meh

[Mere · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so worth the $2 I paid for it but holy depressing

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this collection after I saw all the buzz about Guirgis's newest play "The Motherf**ker with the Hat". Well, his writing is definitely hard-hitting and the characters are marginalized members of society. The slang he uses feels right-on and his spelling of words would definitely help actors in these roles get the intonation right. Most of the characters are anti-heros, but some have no redeeming characteristics at all.

However...these plays felt incomplete in some way. Like, if there was an additional scene added to each one that linked the stories and characters that would shed relevance onto the play as a whole. I loved some of the monologues, but I was left confused sometimes as I couldn't understand the motivations of the characters.

"Our Lady of 121st Street" is about a nun who dies and then her body disappears. The characters then talk about how she affected their lives, but none of these people really turned out that well.

"Jesus Hopped the A Train" takes place in a prison and centers around 2 convicts. One of them confessed to killing 8 people, and the other shot a self-described messiah. They are both in solitary confinement and only have each other to talk to. I liked this one in that the 2 convicts opened up about their experiences.

"In Arabia, We'd all Be Kings" I liked the best of the three. I felt for some of the characters and they were all distinct. It had more feeling and a sense of completion. Also had some profound revelations in it.

This collection is gritty and not for the easily offended. I can't wait to see what comes next from this emerging playwright.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't generally read plays.
I was quickly drawn into Our Lady of 121st Street by the quirky opening exchange and circumstances - a pantsless man addressing a nun's empty coffin, her body having been recently stolen. As I continued reading the play, I found that I never developed concern for any of the characters, but was concerned about them as a group and as a symbol of the deterioration of NYC communities.

The other two plays weren't quite as strong, but still better than most plays I've read. It's all pretty much gritty uneducated people getting shafted in modern society. Watching street smarts and scrapiness fail in the face of more sophisticated processes and systems (gentrification, jail culture, etc.).

Maybe if I read the plays one at a time, taking breaks in between to read other literature, I would have appreciated each piece on its own merits.

[Brett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The dialog in this is laughably bad in that it seems like the writer thinks non-white people either talk like prohibition-era gangsters (stick a clam in it!) or in some obscene caricature of black English. Maybe it plays better live/performed, but it didn't look great on the page.

What is good, though, is Jesus Hopped the A Train, which has a much smaller scope and cast than the other two plays. The smaller size allows for more thematic and character depth and resists the flatness and caricaturization of Our Lady/In Arabia.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

My god is he good with dialog! These plays exemplify Guirgis' great use of language and his ability to keep his plays interesting and moving without concentrating too hard on plot. His characters never seem to end the play in a better place than where they started, but the journey there is always laced with dark humor. Once I started reading one of these plays I found myself unable to stop until I have finished.
Worth reading by anyone who loves theater, vernacular, or humanity.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish there was more theater in America, as intimate with a place OTHER THAN NEW YORK, that everyone would read/respect/enjoy as much as stuff like Guirgis.

People can't get enough of these New York scenes. All over the country we read about New York. And a lot of these New York playwrights are good enough.

If someone writes a play about modern Texas, it is usually some corny crap like a pie baking competition at a Baptist church.

Guirgis is good though.

[Brielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus Hopped the A Train is one of my favorite plays of all time. Guirgus is remarkable in how he uses the street language of the inner city to create these fabulous stories that are "real" but also redemptive. (The other two plays are great too.)

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this collection overall. My favorite of the three was Jesus Hopped the A Train. Great writing; not as strong as The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. I will definitely be reading more of his work & hope to see something performed soon!

[Rolls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great writer at the height of what he can do. All three are affecting but "Jesus" and "Our Lady.." are the true gems here.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of three plays by a contemporary "urban" playwright. My favorite is the prison drama "Jesus Hopped the A Train." Haven't seen any produced, I hope to..

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous plays.

[Bree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Killer, man, just killer. Even if drama is not your thing and you haven't read a play since you plodded your way through Hamlet, this is it.

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

People yell!! at each other!! a lot!!

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

great & weird!

[Nojkceb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful plays about NYC. Have re-read this a few times.