Requiem for a heavy lightweight musical

The Long Wharf Theater's new production, Golden Boy, is a musical that smacks of everything that makes dinner theater bad, except without the food.

COURTESY LONG WHARF THEATER He is not the champion, my friends...

The show tells the story of Joe Bonaparte, played by Rodney Hicks, a young boy from Harlem who, despite his immense talents and a letter of acceptance to medical school, seeks fame and fortune as a boxer. The family has mixed feelings, particularly because Joe's father (Doug Eskew) has already decided his precocious young son will be a doctor. But for Joe, the chance for fame and success proves too tempting. The plot thickens as Joe falls in love with his manager's girl, Lorna Moon (Nana Visitor). The stakes are raised by the end of the first act with Joe's rise to stardom, abandoning his roots and selling his soul to slippery sports promoter Eddie Sateen (Peter Jay Fernandez). And the show ends with a surprise after he slugs it out in the ring with his one- time mentor and undefeated boxer, Frank Lane (David St. Louis), also known as Chocolate Drop. Through all this, except for one funny bit with a hat, the story continually whimpers into syrupy nonsense.

The music doesn't aid the already sagging plot. It rehashes familiar blues and lounge-jazz riffs, throwing in an uninspired minor chord progression or two. The lyrics boast of such triumphs as, "Lorna's here, you big ugly man." There are three highly enjoyable, though not altogether original, musical numbers: "Gimme Some," "Natural African Man," and "Don't Forget 127th Street." These numbers owe their strength partly to the talents of the cast's more minor characters, especially Joe's family and Chocolate Drop, who lend the most humanity but least melodrama to the glitzy, vampy, but ultimately flat production. Doug Eskew as Bonaparte does an amazing job with an all-too brief role. When he sings the final number, "Everything Can Be Lovely in the Morning," a staid, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow theme, the utter strength of his voice still registers immediately with the audience. Beyond some specific pieces performed by Lane and the family, the musical numbers are a piecemeal catalogue of Broadway tricks, less than catchy, and mic'ed too loudly. The dancing looks like Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders strutting their stuff during halftime, with some WWF flourishes thrown in.

Beyond some glimmers of honesty in the performance and characters of Joe's family, the lead players are disappointing. Rodney Hicks' dramatic change from a wet-behind-the-ears aspiring boxer to a tested and slightly embittered success story is not sympathetic or believable on either side. Nana Visitor, as the sultry secretary and Joe's failed love interest, stretches her voice to a torchy vocalesse well beyond her abilities. And Tom Moody, played by Michael Rupert, is a pathetic figure. The actor's performance doesn't lend the character much else.

The staging, while at first seemingly interesting, eventually lends to the show's dinner theater appeal. Done three-quarters in the round and on two levels, the actors do their job in covering all three sections of audience flanking the black stage. The backdrop to the stage proves very interesting, as skyscrapers jut out as if being viewed from immediately underneath a murky blue sky. However, the black smokiness and overall Vegas-ness of the production quickly become oppressive. The flashing colored lights too closely emulate the appearance of a boxing ring, and the smoky effect is distracting and too dark for the crippled production. The costumes, at first a well-coordinated palette of cool silvers, grays, blacks and blues, eventually break down to include any kind of flashy velvet or satin without artistic direction or special consequence.

Theater

Golden Buy By Clifford Odets and William Gibson Music and lyrics by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams Directed by Keith Glover Through Dec. 17 Long Wharf Theater

Altogether, the production is overdone, using glitz, melodrama and vocal vibrado where a less ambitious script and more interesting production choices would have been more appropriate. The actors lumber under the weight of a silly script and conventional music. The production is offensively loud, ill-lit, and too long—two hours and 45 minutes, including intermission. The characters are stock stereotypes, and the plot remains wholly predictable while being highly unbelievable. But perhaps I have been too hasty. If you are one of those people who can't tell music from, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber, then you will probably like Golden Boy quite a lot.

Back to A&E...