Theater review: The Boxer

by Richard Goulde of John Garcia's The Column

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The Boxer is strong enough to yield an engaging antidote to typical theatre fare and a glut of holiday-themed shows.

The Boxer (playing through December 13 at the Collin Theatre Center in Plano) is an unusual, amusing and surprisingly engaging "silent film onstage." It marries the humor of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Tom and Jerry into a single zany show.

Zany? Let me put it this way: At one point, someone has his arm torn off and the marrow sucked out of the bones, and I laughed. You know they're doing something right if they can make that funny.

The Boxer premiered in 2007 at the Festival of Independent Theatres (FIT) to generally rave reviews. Everyone applauded playwright Matt Lyle's innovative vision: an hour-long silent play which replicates the physical comedy of great humorists from a bygone era.

This performance doesn't quite live up to those reviews, but it still has a lot going for it.

Velma (Jayci Molnar) is a down-on-her-luck gal, impersonating a man (in the vein of Charlie Chaplin) to try to turn her fortunes around. In the process, she meets the Boxer (Joey Horton, channeling Buster Keaton) and inadvertently becomes his trainer in preparation for the all-important fight against the Bavarian Beast (Aaron Rathbun). Naturally, the Boxer desperately needs the prize money to care for his ailing mother.

As noted, the play is a "silent film onstage." Two people provide music and sound effects from just off-stage, while the actors must rely solely on physical moment and facial expression for their portrayals. Subtitles (fewer than you'd expect) are projected onto the back wall, along with a couple of humorous "training montages."

Pianist Becky Dobbs and sound effects maestro Johnny Sequenzia manage to hit that sweet spot where, on the one hand, they disappear as their music and sound effects weave seamlessly into the performance, and at the same time, I found myself admiring their versatility and range.

The musical accompaniment was a nice mixture of contemporary and old-school vaudevillian. The sounds manage to elicit the proper visceral reaction, even in a modern audience well removed from the era of silent films. The auditory dimension of "The Boxer" dovetails nicely with its visual presentation. Costumer and makeup designer Robin Armstrong does a great job of creating a vivid, stylized, Depression-era look. Meanwhile, the small space is well-used, and the choreography is generally well-implemented, including a nearly brief but large song-and-dance number. The Boxer has a surprisingly large cast, so kudos to choreographer Kellie Carroll. The props range from minimalist to cartoonish, but always perfectly appropriate.

(I would advise whoever's in charge of the projector, however, to hold off on closing the PowerPoint presentation until the audience has left the theatre; also slow down on the subtitles, which speed by too quickly).

The show's greatest strength lies in the talent of the cast, particularly the two leads (Molnar and Horton). Eschewing speech and relying solely on movement and expression requires a high level of self-awareness and taxing physical consciousness. The cast pulls this off with admirable aplomb. They, and the two leads (again in particular), have clearly spent a lot of time working on the choreography and execution, so kudos to them.

I do need to discern between acting and physical gags here, though. The execution of the latter lags behind the former.

It's easy to underestimate the rigorousness of seemingly random movements in a performance, particularly a comedy whose visual and physical gags come non-stop. Certainly Chaplin was known for excruciating perfectionism in his own creative process. According to the documentary Unknown Chaplin (by way of Wikipedia), Chaplin's union of on-the-spot improvisation with unyielding perfectionism might require upward of a hundred takes (1).

For the most part, I'd say the physical gags are well-done, but from time to time I sensed the actors holding back or faking the movement. Which they are, of course, but the illusion is broken when the audience realizes it. Both Chaplin and Keaton committed themselves to realistic portrayals in ludicrous circumstances, and Keaton frequently performed his own dangerous stunts. I don't encourage anyone to put themselves in danger, but if the actor is going to perform in a physical comedy, they need to fully commit to every physical movement.

But I should emphasize, they only fail to do so a handful of times. Otherwise, Horton's staged falls, Molnar's precise physical comedy, Rathbun's hulking Beast, Johanna Nchekwube's highly stylized sultriness as a waitress all reflect superbly realized physical acting. And all yield a play funnier than I expected.

The play is not without its faults, though.

The single greatest flaw of the show: The timing is off. And unfortunately, split-second timing is absolutely crucial to this kind of humor. So while the play is mildly amusing, it never really hits the viewer in a visceral, belly-laugh-out-loud way.

Every gag lingers a least a few seconds too long, while a handful of scenes feel like filler (like a dream sequence of dancing fairies that's more tiresome than amusing). With the snappy pace lost, none of the jokes hit as hard as they could. And while I wouldn't say the play is too long, I was not at all unhappy to see it end.

Apparently it's only supposed to last an hour, but this performance definitely went over. Missed cues? Too much filler material? That's hard for me to say, but the one-act performance falls just on the cusp of lingering past its welcome.

I'm also (as always) curious about the deeper message of the play. The playwright Matt Lyle (who also directs) says he just wants to entertain us. "I want to make an hour or so of your life a little brighter," he writes in the playbill.

Perhaps that's true: Maybe this play simply represents a creative vision that reaches for the audience's funny bones and nothing else. But I hope that's not the case, because if so, I find some of the humor off-putting.

Specifically, some of the comedy relies on violations of gender roles, since Velma spends most of the play impersonating a man. For example, at one point she's hanging with the guys, and she's disgusted by the prospect of pinching a barmaid's bottom. When she refuses to fully play into the men's expectations of her behavior, she's accused of being a "pansy," chased off-stage, with the men making elaborate displays of disgust at having socialized with a "pansy." I suppose it's a realistic response for the scenario, but it's being played for laughs, and not at the men's expense. That borders on gay-baiting humor.

Chaplin and Keaton both used their humor as a means of social commentary. Keaton, for example, often tackled social issues, like race relations in his short film Neighbors (1920) (2). So I'm going to give Lyle the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't quite play this way to my eyes, but I assume he's offering a withering social commentary on the dangers of gender role typing in promoting se*ism and homophobia.

Outside of that, and overall, was Lyle successful in his goal of making "an hour or so of your life a little brighter"?

Yes. Even if this performance of The Boxer doesn't quite live up to the reviews of the 2007 incarnation, it's still entertaining, unusual, and a wonderful showcase for some fantastic acting and musical talent. Plus, I always appreciate creative vision that sees outside the box.

Yes, the timing is off, and the humor suffers as a result. But this is a challenging play to perform, and they need only tighten it just a bit. Even if they don't manage that, it's still strong enough to yield an engaging antidote to typical theatre fare and a glut of holiday-themed shows.

REFERENCES

(1) "Charlie Chaplin," Wikipedia.com (retrieved 4 December 2009).

(2) Callahan, Dan. "Buster Keaton," Senses of Cinema.com (retrieved 4 December 2009).

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