How do we decide what actually entails justice in the meat market of humanity? That’s the very broad question posed by Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2000 play, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train , in which two inmates at Rikers Island interrogate themselves, each other, and their different attitudes toward faith and redemption during exercise sessions in the yard. (The fact that they are tethered within cages during these sessions underscores the limitations of the human quest for understanding those big questions, as well as the inherent cruelty of the “corrections” system.)

Guirgis’s play comes around every so often—I think City Lit’s current production is the third time I’ve seen it, and it also is the most successful interpretation I’ve encountered. I suspect part of that is because director Esteb

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