Almost a century on and I think we can be adult about the fact that 20th century American playwright Clifford Odets was never in the same league as the older Eugene O’Neill, or the younger Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller (who both clearly owed him a debt). Golden Boy, from 1937, is a fine play but clunkier than any of those writers at their best, with rougher-drawn characters and a somewhat on-the-nose consideration of art versus violence as embodied by protagonist Joe Bonaparte, a sensitive Italian-American violinist who throws himself into the world of boxing, with ultimately tragic results.
But it’s boring to quibble about the flaws of a worthwhile revival: not every US play from the middle of the last century can be A View from the Bridge. Though elements of Sam Yates’ stylish take will doubtless prove to be divisive, I thought it was great, a crack cast meeting a bold vision that seeks to do more than just squeeze Golden Boy into standard naturalist tragedy shapes.
The story opens with Tom, a down-on-his-luck boxer manager in ‘30s New York. He’s played by Daniel Mays with a not entirely dissimilar note to his Nathan Detroit in the Bridge Theatre's recent Guys & Dolls: all comic bluster and goggling eyes. Like Nathan, he even has a girlfriend he won’t marry, although Hayley Squires' Lorna is a more intense character, and the chief impediment to their wedded bliss is that Tom already has a wife.
Business is bad, but then step into the ring – first metaphorically, then literally – Josh O’Connor’s Joe. Preternaturally calm next to the manic Tom, Joe has come from nowhere but appears to be driven by a belief he can be a great boxer. And it turns out he can! But Tom and co are baffled by the fact Joe fights with an elegant defence but little killer instinct. And as Golden Boy hints right from the start, this is clearly because for all Joe professes that he’s moved on from his long-held dream of becoming a concert violinist, he can’t let go, and has been protecting his hands.
The play is a battle for Joe’s soul: in the red corner is boxing, violence, fast cars and cynical survival in a harsh world. The devils on his shoulder are the chaotic Tom and eventually the sinister mobster Eddie Fuseli (a scene-stealingly weird Zubin Varla). In the blue corner, his dreams of musicianhood, or romance, of the world as a good place, as championed by his loving Papa Stanley Townsend (warm energy, hammy accent) and, increasingly, the good-hearted Lorna.
Odets’ text is not subtle about Joe’s inner turmoil, which also serves as his Achilles heel: he is vastly more sensitive than he first appears – throwing a fight after being spooked by the sight of a violinist, gradually unravelling as he succumbs to his killer instinct. It doesn’t take genius to imagine that Odets might be talking about the soul of America and how American masculinity coped with the hard scrabble of the 1930s.
Yates’ string-drenched production makes a virtue of Odets’ symbolism
Smartly, I think, Yates meets Odets’ lack of subtlety with operatic intensity. I wouldn’t describe his revival as bombastic. But he does add a child actor as a young, violin-playing Joe (later chased and intimidated by his future self) to emphasise the loss of his innocence and dreams. And he does add a whole string quartet who hang out behind a wooden screen in Rosanna Vize’s stark ‘30s house interior set. Obviously they ram the point home. But it’s not like there was much subtlety there to begin with and very crucially they sound amazing, not simply for their more elegiac, melodious contributions but also the thrilling dissonance they unleash later on as Joe’s divided mind begins to crumble. The boxing scenes are a maelstrom of strings, movement and a black and white camera feed beaming images from a punchbag O’Connor is sparring with: it’s weird and chaotic and a bit Jamie Lloyd - I was a fan.
In his first major stage role since hitting the big time (he was supposed to do a Romeo & Juliet in 2020 that got cancelled by the pandemic) O’Connor’s Joe begins with a calmly authoritative demeanour that closes the character off from the audience somewhat. It’s a valid interpretation, especially as Yates has so graphically outsourced his inner turmoil via the quartet etc. But it does feel like a much more satisfying piece of acting when he starts falling apart.
There’s a great naturalistic performance from Squires as the intense Lorna, corroding away under her cynicism at the way ’30s America treats ambitious women, scared that Joe’s sweetness won’t turn out to be real. And there’s a great weirdy performance from Varla as Eddie, a mob boss-like figure who channels Brando’s Corleone and Joe Pesci’s Joey DeVito in a gleefully bizarre, almost Dadaist way, both menacing and hilarious in his peculiar Italian-American diction.
A hit in its day, Golden Boy will probably only ever be revived fitfully because it was written smack bang in the middle of a period that yielded the greatest stage tragedies in American history… and it’s not quite one of them. But Yates’ string-drenched production makes a virtue of Odets’ symbolism, and a tip-top cast see it home. A historically important play, but this revival makes it feel thoroughly alive.
