The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘The Royale’ from Cleveland Play House comes out swinging
Expressionistic, heavyweight drama ‘The Royale’ — the play at center of New Ground fest — inspired by boxer Jack Johnson
Howard Sackler’s Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prizewinning play “The Great White Hope” offered a dramatization of the real-life struggles — the demonization, the racism, the ridicule — of boxer Jack Johnson after becoming the first African-American heavyweight champion of the world at the start of the 20th century.
Originally staged in 1967, the drama was a gargantuan production that featured 63 actors playing 247 roles in 20 scenes that jump counties and countries over the course of three and a half hours. The show boldly and uncompromisingly took to the stage at a time when the civil rights movement took to the streets.
Marco Ramirez’s “The Royale” — premiering in 2013 and currently being staged by the Cleveland Play House as the main event of this year’s New Ground Theatre Festival — explores the personal demons Johnson encountered on his way to that championship fight.
The storytelling is comparatively sparse and intimate, stripped down to one act, five actors and a boxing ring. And it is given an expressionistic theatricality that doesn’t so much serve to display the state of racism in this country as subtly remind us just how deeply ingrained it is in the American psyche.
The show is spartanly staged in the round, and performers roam about and around the circular ring in dramatic silhouette as if frozen in time and space, courtesy of lighting designer Alan C. Edwards and scenic designer Jason Ardizonne-West’s vision and craftsmanship.
Heightened speech dominates the play’s dialogue. It takes the form of the internal voices and surreptitious exchanges in the clutch by our fictionalized Jack Johnson, named Jay (Preston Butler III), and fellow boxer Fish (Johnny Ramey), as well as an occasional rhapsodic monologue by Jay’s trainer, Wynton (Brian D. Coats), and sister, Nina (Nikkole Salter). You’ll also hear clipped play-by-play accounts of the boxing matches by promoter Max (Leo Marks).
The boxing itself is gracefully and stylistically pantomimed with hits represented by percussive hand claps and foot stomps by the initiator and understated reactive physicality by the recipient. By shifting the emphasis from the violent impact of the strikes to the running narrative that describes the sweet science and thought process behind them, the boxing more easily becomes metaphoric, the epic racial significance of the championship fight is accentuated, and everything is given added weight — including the athletic but undersized Butler as Jay.
Liberated of the historical Johnson’s largerthan-life demeanor, Butler manages to display Jay’s contemplative nature in addition to his competitiveness as he wrestles with the profound personal and social consequences of his championship bout.
The sparring partner, trainer and promoter are characters typically given little dimensionality in most plays about pugilism, including “The Great White Hope.” But Ramey, Coats and Marks, respectively, find depth and purpose in all that they do in these roles. Add dignity and resolve to this list of qualities regarding Salter’s fine performance as Nina, who is saddled with reminding him of the personal consequences of a fight that Jim Crow America is not yet ready for.
Everything is propelled forward and given emotional punch by director Robert Barry Fleming, who does not give the audience an opportunity to exhale throughout this intense, highly sensorial production.
And so, fighting out of the Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square, with 20 professional performances all of them a knockout, give it up for this heavyweight drama, “The Royale.”