BOXING STORY DOES NOT PULL ITS PUNCHES
Terry O’Neill drives home the brutality of the ring… but there are laughs too
The set comprises part of a boxing ring with a backdrop of enlarged covers from RING magazine. Boxerturned-actor/comedian Terry O’Neill has a story to tell and he does it with enormous energy and conviction. Not the kind of energy we normally talk about on stage, but the light-footed agility of an athlete still in great physical condition who takes us into the pleasure and punishment of life as a boxer from the time he was a young boy until he decided he had gone far enough with the sport and wanted to dedicate his skills and enthusiasm to the stage.
He tells it all with a very engaging stage presence, and an appealing sense of humour that can have him laughing at himself. But above all you feel that you’re witnessing a story that has genuine integrity, including the odd bit of demotic language.
Boxing took him all over the world representing Ireland and enjoying the celebrity and fame that went with it. But there’s no attempt to sweeten the sheer brutality of the ring where blows to the head can have you literally seeing stars, not those jokey ones that you see in cartoons but the damaging effects of punishment to the brain.
He covers that aspect of the fight game very clearly in his comments on the destructive effect constant beatings to the head had on the brain of Muhammad Ali. That obviously convinced him that you can only take so much of that punishment, andto use his talents on the stage instead.
He goes into a condensed history of professional boxing in the 20th Century, aware that life at the top in the business is short and brutal. In one remarkable speech he illustrates a list of champions and the opponents who beat them. For skill in compacting a lot of information into a short space, it compares with Tom Lehrer’s breathless list of the scientific elements sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Modern Major General.
O’Neill has a few rough edges as a solo performer, but he’s obviously driven by a desire to entertain. I saw him at a preview: when he engaged a bit too much with the audience in the style of Derren
Brown, that slowed things down, suggesting perhaps that he hadn’t sufficient confidence in his material. Unnecessary. When he gets to relax more, the laughs will come more easily.
Rope-A-Dope is a technical boxing device (made famous by Ali) to wear out an opponent to the point where you can counter-attack and win. O’Neill’s decision to give up boxing for something totally different reminded me of former world heavyweight champion Gene Tunney’s remark when he was invited to speak about Shakespeare at Yale University.
‘I’ve been invited because I’m world champion,’ he said, ‘but how long can that last?’ And Tunney, who spoke to 400 people for 45 minutes without notes, was certainly not asked just because he was a boxer. A self-educated man from a poor background, he devoured books and read all the Shakespeare plays.
TheYaleprofessorwhoinvitedhim was impressed by his insights into Shakespeare, especially Troilus And
‘Above all, you feel you’re witnessing a story that has genuine integrity’
Cressida, which Tunney compared to the world of boxing. American newspapers were intrigued by this boxer speaking at a top university. A few were complimentary but one critic wrote, ‘The world that supports pugilism as a sport, prefers to regard the boxing champion as an example of brawn, not of brains’.
But Bernard Shaw was a great admirer of Tunney, becoming a close friend of his and developing his love of music. He wrote that ‘boxing is interesting, not only technically, but because it’s an exhibition of character concentrating into minutes, differences that years of ordinary intercourse leave hidden’.
Tempesta, by Deirdre Kinahan, runs at Rex Ryan’s Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street (Tuesday until Oct 28). It’s about a storm of love inspired by real events in Ireland and Spain in the 1930s, when two Dubliners are caught up in the war in Europe. With Stephanie Dufresne and Jack Mullarkey. This is the 17th play in the Glass Mask, and the second on the new stage.
The Lion King (Tuesday until Nov 11) opens in Bord Gáis Theatre this week.