Ferocious drama breaks the heart
January 16, 2008
By CATEY SULLIVAN, PIONEER PRESS
With a heart as mountainous as the prizefighter at its core, "Requiem for a Heavyweight" is an electrifying fable of the human wreckage that results in the wake of an American dream almost won.
Now in its 16th season, Shattered Globe Theatre shows no signs of settling into sedate even as it enters elder statesman status among its off-Loop contemporaries. "Requiem" is a ferocious, ravenous drama that grabs the audience's unblinking attention from lights up, and holds tight until the final, cataclysmic moments. Director Lou Contey has crafted a theatrical comet that blazes from start to finish with intellect, wit and vitally realized emotion.
From the title (or familiarity with the classic film), audiences might know going in that this is a tale riddled with violence. Even so, the blood-drenched, sweat-slicked brutality of the wordless opening scene is a shocker as aging boxer Mountain McClintock (Sean Sullivan) is pummeled into hamburger by a younger fighter (Michael Falevits). Nick Sandys' fight choreography, Mike Durst' s deft lighting design, Ora Jewell-Busche's wince-inducing wounds and the canny use of slo-mo blocking create a bout of hair-raising veracity.
Penned by a pre-"Twilight Zone" Rod Serling, "Requiem for a Heavyweight" has been referred to as one of the greatest sports dramas ever written. That may be, but within the bone-cracking, skin-splitting world of "Requiem" is a human drama that transcends professional sports. Pigeonholing it into a genre is a mistake: Serling's "Requiem" is as universal as ambition and as heartbreaking as unrequited love.
The plot centers on Mountain McClintock, a huge, Tennessee-born pugilist. "I was almost the heavyweight champion of the world!" is the fading mantra McClintock clings to, even as his cuts open up like irrigation ditches and his manager Maish (Bill Bannon) tells him his career in the ring is over. Outside the ring, Mountain is essentially a foreigner in his own country; his fighting skills are worthless, his size freakish, his battered face monstrous. And so when final round is called, McClintock has worse than no where to go: He has no one to be.
As gaming world thugs move in on Maish to collect a debt he can't pay now that his meal ticket is no better than a side of beef, McClintock finds the only thing he has left, a scrap of dignity, is being sold for cheap. A sympathetic job placement officer is hardly a match for Maish, a tough and conniving pimp who loves McClintock even as he sells him out to a charlatan slimebag. Director Contey orchestrates a seamless ensemble cast to utterly pitch-perfect performance as Maish and McClintock struggle to define what's left of their lives. As the one-time champ, Sullivan is a gentle giant of enormous appeal, ferocious within the ring, heart-breaking outside of it. But it is Bannon's Maish who creates the five-alarm tissue emergency in a final scene that will send even the most jaded cynics snuffling into their sleeves.
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