The Boys From Kingsbridge

Theater For The New City

Dream Up 2025 Festival

30 August 2025

I was not exactly sure what to expect from The Boys From Kingsbridge — I knew it was a “gritty police drama” framed against the success of the Yankees baseball team and their success in winning the American League Championship Series and thus earning the team a spot in the World Series. 

I was honestly, a bit concerned that this may be a very pro‐police show — which could be a rather hard thing to pull off in today’s society where the police officers themselves are often the ones taking the criticism when a cop does something wrong. And I am not saying that the individual police officers who do morally wrong things (and especially the police officers that do take it way farther than a situation needs to be taken) should not be held accountable — they absolutely should. But this show points out that while yes, bad cops should absolutely be punished, but also the people in the charge, the politicians making the laws, need to be held accountable, too. Because, as this play states, most of the police are trying to uphold the law, whether they agree with that law or not. They are given quotas to meet and sent to impoverished areas to enforce crimes that are often not really important just so that the police force can keep bringing in money. This is a system, it is argued, that the good cops, the average cops, are essentially stuck in the cycle set up by the higher ups.

There is of course, some truth in the fact that the police forces, as a whole, are systemically broken and racist. And for a lot of police officers, just like people in any other job, they comply with the orders they are given — not because they necessarily agree with the orders or the policy, but because if they refused it would be career suicide, at best, and perhaps even criminal at worst. That being said, the system being broken doesn’t absolve the individual police officers who do go too far. In fact, it should inspire the police officers to work to make change, but I fear for most, it’s just about keeping their jobs and not making waves. I imagine that at least for some, the endless cycle of being forced to do things that you don’t believe in morally would hopefully inspire change and not just beat the person down into submission. But I’ve always been hopeful. The show does take special care to point out the high suicide rate among members of law enforcement and takes care to explain that it is often due to being overworked, having broken or faulty equipment, and having no choice but to do things that they feel are wrong.

The show includes two actors — Steven Sarao, who is also the writer, playing the character named Steve. And opposite him, as his police partner and best friend, is James Lorinz portraying Mike. 

Steve is a book smart man (having attended Harvard), driven to make a positive change in the world, wants to see reform in law enforcement, but struggles in feeling that he is nothing but a work horse, a lackey, for the more powerful who do not have the best interest of the innocent members of society in mind, but rather they are interested in cutting corners and lining their own pockets.

Mike is much more of a streets smart type of guy. He knows he has little ability to change the system that he works within. Mike (and Steve) have both been studying for the Sergeant’s exam — to see if they could be promoted. Mike has failed this exam multiple times, but Steve consistently passes it. However, Steve never takes the promotion and instead works with Mike in hopes of Mike being able to pass it too.

Mike and Steve go way back, having known each other their entire lives and really only ever parting ways when Steve attended Harvard University. Their friendship is truly a  codependent relationship and as the play unfolds, it is revealed that it has been this way for a long time. The two friends have had a hard life growing up complete with abusive parents, rough neighbourhoods, and fist fights having to be a way of life.

The show opens with Steve telling the audience about his friend Mike and how they will never see each other again. He continues to monologue about growing up in Kingsbridge, and his love for the Yankees, and most importantly about Mike.

Then it is Mike’s turn to give his opening monologue in which he gives his point of view on the same things that Steve spoke about. And finally, the audience see the two characters interact — they do act like long time friends, giving each other a hard time, cursing each other out, and just chatting like close friends do. 

As I mentioned before, this show only had the two actors. Therefore all of the other characters — a police sergeant, a couple being arrested, etc. were either not present on stage at all or the two actors mimed moving the other people around (an example would be placing their hands on the arrested couples heads and leading them into the police cruiser). While this worked for the majority of the show, there was at least once where it was not made clear that two people were being arrested and not just one until a good minute or two after the event happened and it was the dialogue that gave it away. 

The sets were simplistic; the front of a police car, a podium, a bench, a radio, a desk… nothing elaborate, but the show simply did not call for extravagance, in fact, it called for simple and worn down. 

The costuming was also pretty minimal, really only consisting of the two actors wearing their police uniforms. I did find it odd that neither of the uniforms had any sort of badge on it anywhere and the guns that the officers carried having bright red tips was a bit distracting. But I have to wonder if legalities of some sort prevented the usage of more realistic uniforms and firearms. 

The show did have one glaring problem that is hard to overlook. At one point, the two characters are in their police cruisers, just chatting, but it’s during a “sacred time” where the characters get to enjoy their coffee and relax a little bit before the day really starts and they start receiving “jobs” (911 calls) that they have to respond to. It is during this scene that the audience see both the characters of Mike and Steve with open books in their hands. I thought that the characters were parked, reading books, enjoying the quiet part of their shift… until they mention the need to pull over. It was then that I realised that these character were not parked and enjoying a book during a slow part of their shift — the actors were reading their lines from the script. Unfortunately, this was not lost on other members of the audience because I was asked immediately upon exiting the theatre by another patron if the actors were still on book.

There was one other thing that I found odd about this show…and WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD:

The show opens with a radio talking about the Yankees and immediately after is the opening monologue spoken by the character of Steve. This is the monologue in which Steve tells the audience about how hard it is to be a police officer. This is when the audience is informed of the high suicide rate among law enforcement and how the police officers also get the short end of the stick. And it is in this monologue that it is mentioned that Steve never sees Mike anymore. 

It becomes apparent on this opening monologue that one of the two characters is not going to survive this tale. And since this show opens with Steve, I would have thought Mike would unfortunately lose his life. In fact, a major plot point throughout the show is that Mike is desperate to tell Steve something, but he struggles to actually say the words. I was sure that perhaps this secret that Mike must tell Steve was going to be along the lines of him being sick and terminal. So it was a huge surprise to me when Steve is the one killed in the line of duty. And then the show ended. With the choice of Steve being the one to die, I felt there needed to be an additional scene where, heartbreakingly, Mike cannot handle it anymore and takes his own life — harking back to the words that Steve spoke in the beginning.