Almost

Requiem for a Heavyweight – The Artistic Home

Requiem for a Heavyweight started life as a television play in 1956 by a pre-Twilight Zone Rod Serling, starring Jack Palance as an aging boxer. It was adapted into a film in 1962 with Anthony Quinn. This week, it is adapted into a stage version at The Artistic Home. The story focuses on ‘Mountain’ McClintock, a heavyweight boxer who spent his career always almost, but never quite, winning the championship, and is now too injured to continue boxing, and his manager Maish. It is revealed in the opening scene that Maish bet against Mountain in his final fight to get the money he needed to buy the contract of a young up-and-comer, Mountain’s replacement. Seeking any work he can get, he meets Grace at an employment agency and begins a tentative friendship.

Despite its age, there is a lot that is relevant to today in this show. What we used to call ‘punch drunk’ in a boxer is now called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in NFL players. At points, the play explicitly describes the managers and promoters as pimps, raising the question of how different one kind of selling your body is from another. All of this surrounds a very relatable tale of loss. At the ripe old age of 35, Mountain can no longer do the one job he has ever known. Between grappling with that and some unpleasant realizations about a man he views like a father, the show has a pretty solid recipe for drama.

My main complaint is that several scenes are just repeating information the audience already knows. At the top of the show, we basically get three scenes in a row recapitulating that the Mountain can no longer continue fighting and everyone is upset about it. Throughout the show, we see a despondent Mountain several times trying to resist becoming one of the aged fighters who do nothing but sit in the bar all day recounting the same stories of the same long ago fights. If each iteration of the loop revealed something new, it would be interesting, but as presented, it just retreads ground. Each individual scene works well on the strength of the acting, but in repetition, it just drags the action to a halt. At a two and a half hour run time, I honestly think more than a few scenes could have been cut or trimmed, and a version of this that’s a 90-minute-ish one-act might have been more consistently engaging.

The most effective scenes for me were the ones that paint Maish and Mountain’s relationship as something not too different from that of abusive parent and child. Maish resents the burden the Mountain’s career has placed on him and feels he is ‘owed’ something, but at the same time needs the Mountain more than the Mountain needs him. He actively sabotages Mountain’s attempts to build a life elsewhere. That emotional core gives the inevitable confrontation at the climax of the play some bite.

The cast is also, pretty much to a person, amazing. Mark Pracht imbues Mountain McClintock with a real vulnerability and interior life that makes him more than his faded boxing career and makes Grace’s attraction to him credible. You’re left with the impression he doesn’t fight because he’s angry or violent, but just because it’s what he was good at, and it would get him out of his small Tennessee town. Annie Hogan as Grace managed to wring every last ounce of drama out of a fairly thin part. On paper, she’s not much more than the archetypal girlfriend/savior figure, but through sheer force of will and small muscle movements with her face, she manages to make Grace a fully realized character whose desire to help and eventual attraction to Mountain feel organic and earned, and someone you care about separate from the role she plays in Mountain’s life.

It’s a good story with a great cast. I think it just goes on for about half an hour too long for me. That said, stories of someone reckoning with the end of their career and dealing with the fallout of learning the people they love are not who they seem to be are timeless for a reason. On the strength of this cast alone, this show is worth your time.

Recommended

Presented February 13 – March 31 by The Artistic Home at 1376 W. Grand Ave., Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling 866-811-4111 or by visiting www.theartisitchome.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com.