Playwright: Joseph Moncure March . At: Silent Theatre Company at Prop Thtr, 3504 N. Elston. Phone: 773-597-5403; $15, $10 students, seniors. Runs through: Oct. 4
Silent Theatre Company is billing The Set-Up as a spectacle, but that's overselling things significantly. The piece is a slight diversion. And while its execution is original and occasionally shows glimmers of potential, its emotional heft is featherweight. The tragic tale of a washed-up boxer should pack an emotional wallop. Instead , it's merely mildly enjoyable and eminently forgettable. What leaves the impression isn't the story or the thinly drawn characters but rather the live band that nimbly accompanies all the action. Directed by Nick DuFloth, The Set-Up is 50 minutes of noirish atmospherics that seems more like a backdrop for a main event rather than the main event itself.
Based on a 1928 poem by John Moncure March, The Set-Up is short, brutish and violent. And while it bluntly deals with the racism encountered by washed-up fighter Pansy Jones, its portrayals of crooked, money-grubbing Jews and snarling, whiskey-toting Scots as lowlife "lice of the ring" are stereotypes straight out of Old Hollywood Central Casting.
The piece is a less-than-successful departure for the Silent Theatre Company which usuallyper the namepresents silent theater, staging ingenious adaptations of golden oldies from the days before the talkies. By contrast, the Set-Up is a motormouth of a show, as a slouching narrator with a snappy period hat ( Derek Ryan ) delivers March's rhyming couplets with the deep bass and rapid staccato of a ringside commentator. While a three-piece band riffs in the background, the acting ensemble pantomimes through the prologue: As a champ, Pansy ( Toby Lee Taylor ) lived large, draped in fur and floozies. But Pansy's party ends with a bigamy charge and a stint in prison. Post-prologue, we meet the former fighter: Penniless and bordering on fat but willing to enter the ring again in one last shot at glory. Enter back-alley, rat-faced fixers Cohn ( Nathan Paul ) and MacPhail ( Noah Bazis ) , sniffing out a profit in a fixed fight between Pansy and the white Sailor Gray ( Scott Coyne. )
While narrator Ryan batters away in rhyme ( often sounding like a caricature of a beat poet ) , the fight commences and a quintet of multiple-role playing cast members fill the stage in bit parts as pool hall harlots, bartenders, Mobsters and petty thugsthe group is nothing if not efficient in quick change switcheroos.
But between the wholly unconvincing fight choreography and the lack of emotional authenticity, it's tough to find the heart in The Set-Up. Taylor's Pansy is a two-dimensional blank with a knack for fisticuffs. Coyne's barrel-chested Sailor Gray is the same. The band ( which opening weekend consisted of bassist Paul Gilvary, pianist Teddy Stuebi, trumpet player Steve Wright ) is the most dynamic element of The Set-Up. As a concert, that would be fine. As a stage play? Not so much.