What distinguishes professional athletes from others who make a living doing work most folks consider to be play is not merely the brevity of their careers—bodies wear out sooner than brains—but the difficulty of knowing when to quit. Some contenders invest their money wisely in anticipation of a long and quiet retirement, but too many spend their youth pursuing immediate goals, only to be confronted with the realization that glory is fleeting in this transitory world.
Roy Williams sets his play in London "south of the river" during the early 1980s when the social welfare reforms introduced in 1945 were curtailed by an increasingly conservative government. Since poverty and inflation tend to bring out the worst in an already disenfranchised populace, petty crime, police harassment and race riots have erupted in the council estates ("projects" to us yanks).
This is how would-be burglers Leon Davidson and Troy Augustus, two second-generation African-Caribbean teenagers, come to avoid jail by cleaning the shabby boxing gymnasium that gruff Charlie Maggs owns. When the old trainer's neophyte pugilist deserts him for higher-profile matches, Charlie looks to Leon and Troy for an entry to the Big Time—or at least a ticket out of the slums. This is not just a boxing story. When the characters aren't mixing it up in the ring, they're practicing for the ring, and when they're not practicing, they're scuffling with one another—sometimes playfully, sometimes angrily. Even Charlie's private-school daughter smacks the speed-bag out of frustration. These are people who fight, every minute of their lives, and who see in that fight their escape from the enslavement of social and economical oppression. This renders all the more heartbreaking their discovery that fighting can become a job like any other, replete with humiliation, rejection, betrayal, bankruptcy, promotion ceilings and walking papers. Adrenalin and testosterone are heady substances, but though fight designer Chuck Coyl and boxing coach Ruben Gonzalez have drilled their actors (regardless of age or gender) in physical prowess ranging from Maurice Demus' breath-sucking monologue recited while cross-jumping rope, to Kenn E. Head's shove-and-tumble take-down, Dexter Bullard's characteristically kinetic direction of a cast encompassing seasoned troupers like John Judd and Walter Briggs, as well as newcomers like Denzel Love and Taylor Blim never ignores the psychological corrosion that eventually leads even winners to lose their morale after defiance has soured it cynicism. If, as Leon's shiftless father asserts, audiences love to watch Black men getting beaten up, what is our role in perpetuating a game rigged from the very beginning?
