Josh O’Connor was last seen playing a principled whistleblower in Steven Spielberg’s somewhat by-the-numbers sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day. We can assume Spielberg cast him because the actor’s face has integrity built into its bone structure. It is a sensitive face and for this reason not an obvious choice for a violent role.
Yet this is the second time O’Connor has played a prize fighter. The first was in the Knives Out franchise in which he played a priest who, before he was ordained, killed an opponent in the ring. And now here he is in Clifford Odets’ rarely staged Broadway hit of 1937 playing Joe Bonaparte, a Depression-era 21-year-old New Yorker.
Although Joe also has a sensitive side, which is expressed through a talent for playing the violin, like O’Connor’s other reluctant fighter, this one also smites an opponent with a rage that subsumes his gentle humanity.
Sam Yates’s production boasts a supporting cast all of whom are usually the star name in their productions.
Daniel Mays channels something of his Nathan Detroit in Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre production of Guys and Dolls. Here Mays is a sweaty, middle-aged boxing manager desperate to find the talent who will pave a future for him and his considerably younger mistress Lorna, played by Hayley Squires as a hard-bitten but good-hearted survivor of the hard-knock life.
The day after seeing the show I happened to be talking to – forgive the name drop – Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the Modern Family star who is soon appearing at the Menier as Truman Capote. Ferguson, who was also at the opening of Golden Boy, was sitting in front of Rachel Brosnahan, who is best known for playing the title role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with that, as Ferguson describes it, spot-on “sassy Jewish Brooklyn” accent.
According to Ferguson, Brosnahan confirmed that the accents of the British actors on stage were “really, really good”, which was all the confirmation one needs of this production’s authenticity.
Yet this is the best production of a flawed play you could hope for. Putting aside the dodgy premise and the hard-to-believe notion that violence and the violin could ever be a sliding-doors choice in life, the psychology on display in the heightened climax feels manufactured by the author.
Still, on stage for the first time in 11 years, O’Connor conveys the human equivalent of a knife edge, switching in a flash between the sweet-natured boy who was bought a violin by his Italian father to the raw rage of someone who knows fists will give him a better chance of escaping the Depression than music ever could.
Face aside, O’Connor certainly has the torso of a fighter as he attacks the hanging punch bag with visceral ferocity. He is a knockout.
Golden Boy is at the Almeida
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