The play’s titular crackwalker is a hulking, crazy street person who haunts the fringes of the stage, watching as four marginal characters slip through society’s cracks. In 1980, this play established a reputation for playwright Judith Thompson as a daring chronicler of the urban underclass. The current revival by Staged and Confused lives up to the legend and maybe even surpasses it.

From the first moment, this is riveting theatre: semi-retarded Theresa (Marie Jones) is detailing her trashy sex life, like blowing old queers for cash behind a seedy hotel or sleeping with a friend’s boyfriend right on the freakin’ couch.

Hoser Tragedy is practically a genre of the Canadian canon, and a cardinal rule is to have characters speak as hosers truly speak. Thompson, who was raised in Kingston, clearly had an ear for the cadence and the cultural references. But can the actors play more than caricatures? Jones, for one, is immediately impressive with a difficult role, and almost keeps it real through the demanding (and slightly questionable) second act.

More impressive still is Rick Jon Egan as Alan, Theresa’s good-hearted but troubled admirer. Through his always-visible fears and doubts, Alan yearns for manhood but only finds madness. Egan gives a heightened performance that nevertheless remains transparent and unaffected. The supporting actors don’t meet the same marks, but director Michael Murphy delivers a solid production, making a virtue of the brick shoebox that is Passe Muraille’s Backspace. With cultural subsidies under scrutiny, this Cancon re-harvest is a timely reminder of what government support has wrought.