Clifford Odets’ 1937 Broadway play, “Golden Boy,” is a huge, old-fashioned work with three acts and a large cast. It requires an inordinate investment of time all around. Like the plays of William Shakespeare and August Wilson, such an investment might pay off grandly. Sadly, when the denouement arrived Sunday, June 22, it left the critic unmoved. Perhaps the 12th-hour whammy is known and forgotten from a long-ago experience of the 1939 film with William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck and Adolph Menjou.
The subtleties of the play’s leisurely dramatic arc may be beyond the current expertise of several less experienced New Village Arts (NVA) actors. Or maybe the play’s length (2:45) is too taxing for the jet-lagged mind. It is telling to note that “Golden Boy” has had only one Broadway revival (1952, with John Garfield).
Nonetheless, the June 22 matinee audience was on its feet at the play’s end, bestowing vociferous applause on a 15-member company that includes director Joshua Everett Johnson, who turns in a memorable performance as slime-ball mobster and prizefight manager Eddie Fuseli. This was back in the days when boxing promoters literally owned the men they represented. A notorious homosexual and frighteningly violent man, Eddie gets a piece of the play’s protagonist, young Joe Bonaparte, played by Michael Zlotnik. One will never forget Johnson’s physicality, his menace and his frightening, on-the-attack leap in Act III. This performance itself is the payoff.
“Golden Boy” tells the story of young Joe, torn between the two possibilities, one represented by the strings of his violin and the other, by the ropes and possible riches of the boxing ring.
Eddie’s Italian father (Eric Poppick) hopes for the former, but as a neighbor remarks, “Could the muses put bread and butter on the table?” For a time, Joe’s fear of injuring his hands impedes his performance in the ring, but that is soon subsumed by his hope of glory and riches, and abetted by the machinations of his manager, Moody (Manny Fernandes, more Brando than Menjou) and Moody’s girlfriend Lorna (Amanda Sitton, glorious).
Lorna is torn between the two men, and despite an apparent lack of chemistry between Sitton and Zlotnik, manages to make their love scenes believable. With Fernandes, she sizzles.
Amanda Dane, Carlos Darze, John DeCarlo, Ryan Lahetta, Ryan Hunter Lee, Jeff Anthony Miller, Pat Moran, Greg Wittman and Eddie Yaroch complete the company.
Thanks to Mary Larson’s costumes for both men and women and Kristianne Kurner and Tim Wallace’s detailed scenic design, NVA’s “Golden Boy” is redolent of the late 1930s world of prize fighting. Ring choreography by DeCarlo and fight direction by Miller enhance the production, along with Nate Pardee’s lighting design and Adam Lansky’s sound.
“Golden Boy” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays at New Village Arts Theatre, 2787 B State St., Carlsbad.
For tickets and information, visit www.newvillagearts.org or call (760) 433-3245. The Coaster provides good connections for Saturday matinees.
