Theater Reviews—

Is This What Boxing Has Become?

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — Yes it’s barbaric and inhumane, but I’ve always had a soft spot for boxing, ever since I was a kid going next door, where my friend Lenny’s family had a television, and everyone in the neighborhood got to watch the fights on it. Historically I know that boxing was traditionally a way up and out of the slums for young men of every ethnic persuasion. Once they found a better way to break into the middle class the Irish were replaced by Italians and Blacks, the Jews by Latinos and so forth.

This progression is illustrated in Clifford Odets’ play about a young would-be violinist, Joe Bonaparte, who is seduced into becoming a pro fighter by a seedy agent and his unscrupulous mistress.

Keith Glover adapted the story via the Charles Strouse-Lee Adams 60s musical about a ghetto kid who passes up the chance to go to medical school in order to enjoy the glamour that comes with the boxing scene as offered by the oleaginous promoter Eddie Sateen (shades of Don King, without the hair). The story, Golden Boy, is wrapping up a run at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven this weekend.

Tom Moody, the agent who takes Bonaparte on and grooms him for success in the ring, seem straight out of the 1930s, complete with old-fashioned telephone representing a time when boxing management was the province of white men only. He arrogantly takes for granted his dominance over the young fighter, and casually assumes that his “secretary,” Lorna Moon’s, feelings mirror his own.

Lorna, however, who by her own admission “has a lot of miles” on her, is impressed by both Joe and his family when she travels up to Harlem to meet them. Joe is in love with her, and his youthful passion rekindles in her, the possibility of believing in dreams. In comparison to the intelligence, talent and supreme confidence of the “Golden Boy,” Moody, who is always promising to marry her when his divorce becomes final, comes off as a weak, two-timing four-flusher.

Here the story is complicated by the question of whether his meteoric rise will lead Joe to abandon his past. “Don’t forget 127th Street,” his sister and brother-in-law warn when he wins his first fight and is launched on the road to stardom. “Don’t forget your admission to medical school,” his father cautions angrily.

But that is just exactly the fabulous nature of this tale, and soon Bonaparte is lured into the camp of slick Eddie Sateen, who showers him with luxuries — a new Porche, silk shirts, and the Harlem high life, even as Joe moves away from the actual ghetto. When Eddie decides to wrest total control of the Golden Boy away from Moody, and Joe goes along with it because “careerwise” it’s a good move, Lorna leaves him and goes back to her old situation.

Eddie arranges an overmatched fight with Joe’s boyhood hero, Frank Lane, in order to bring in big money, and the outcome of that fight becomes the crux of the tale.

In fact, that fight, taking place on the Long Wharf Stage is definitely the best thing about the show, capturing the flavor of boxing, the claustrophobic nature of the ropes, the garish “cheerleaders” and ringmaidens parading around with signs denoting the “round,” the amorality of the referee and the brain-damaged confusion of the fighters trying desperately to keep on their feet until the safety of the next bell. If this is an example of Glover as a director, then he is something special.

The music of this musical, on the other hand, is not so memorable. It is not helped by having the show last for 2¾ hours. The voices are fine; it’s just what they’re being asked to sing.

There is one moving ballad, “Butterfly,” sung by Frank Mastrone as Bonaparte’s trainer Tokio. Doug Eskew pulls off an absolute show-stopper in the final scene with a song called “One More Chance.” The thought occurred that if he had done that early in the play the audience would have been grumpy and resentful about everything that followed.

Nana Visitor, perhaps familiar from seven seasons on Star Trek, projects a great deal of sympathy in the role of Lorna, although she is no great shakes as a singer.

David St. Louis was terrific in the part of Frank Lane, capturing the look and especially the moves of a real boxer. Watching him bob and weave and shadow box it was hard to believe that the Golden Boy stood a chance against him.

Rodney Hicks plays Bonaparte with the boyish intelligence of a young Chris Rock, but he behaved so foolishly that it was hard to cheer for him. That, of course is a matter of plot rather than acting, and it was that kind of story. As Eddie, Peter Jay Fernandez is pure sleaze, having learned the lesson that money is everything; but perhaps that is what boxing has become.

 (Evening and matinee performances of Golden Boy continues through December 17. Contact Long Wharf, at 222 Sargent Drive in New Haven, at 203/787-4282 for show time and reservation information.)