Theater: Lincoln Center Theater / 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY,
Synopsis:
A man defies his family and a promising career as a classical musician for a shot at immortality in the boxing ring.
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December 6, 2012: Plenty of punches are thrown in the forceful new revival of Clifford Odets’s “Golden Boy” that opened on Thursday night at the Belasco Theater. Eyes are blackened, uppercuts fly back and forth, and by the end of the play, the young boxer hero, Joe Bonaparte (Seth Numrich), is staggering across the stage, delirious and practically bathed in blood.
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December 6, 2012: There's nothing subtle about the story of "Golden Boy," Clifford Odets' drama about a gifted Italian-American kid who gives up his violin for fame and fortune as a prizefighter. There probably was nothing subtle about it when Odets wrote it to be a hit for the Group Theatre in 1937, or when William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck starred in the movie two years later. Or when Sammy Davis Jr. did a musical version in 1964.
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December 6, 2012: Four months after Mike Tyson muscled his way onto a Broadway stage, the bell has rung for another show featuring a boxer. Guess which is better? It's not even close.
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December 6, 2012: Nothing hammers home the anemia of many new plays being presented on Broadway today quite like the comparison of watching a robust nugget from the national theatrical canon such as Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy. That’s especially true in a production as thoughtfully conceived and vividly inhabited as Bartlett Sher’s riveting 75th anniversary revival for Lincoln Center Theater. Performed on the same stage where it premiered in 1937, this grave assessment of the cost of the American Dream still thrums with a heartfelt humanism both soaring and tragic.
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December 6, 2012: We should all be so lucky to end up as spry and sharp at 75 as Clifford Odets' Golden Boy, which debuted on Broadway in 1937 and has been given a handsome revival by Lincoln Center Theater at Broadway's Belasco Theatre. The show's old-country characters and cobblestone street slang may have aged into artifacts of Old New York, but the story still has plenty of energy and surefooted emotion even if it doesn't quite pack a knockout punch.
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