one more good review of the play I did the lighting/set design for

'Pugilist' a powerful indictment

Blunt and experimental theater piece moves around in old building as it stresses hardships facing new immigrants.

By JOHN TOWNSEND, Special to the Star Tribune

Last update: August 24, 2010 - 4:44 PM

You actually have to sign a waiver to see "The Polish Pugilist," 
because it's being played on three floors of a tatty building that 
looks as if it might have existed at the time the show is set in.

In the show, writer/director Jeremey Catterton exposes the disconnect between the American Dream and blunt realities faced by new immigrants, such as unpaid wages, filthy housing and treacherous working conditions. Drawing from novelist Upton Sinclair's raging 1906 indictment of the meatpacking industry, "The Jungle," and loosely blending the persona of Rocky Balboa, popularized by Sylvester Stallone, in the Rocky films, Catterton shapes a spare and stunning commentary on the exploitation of immigrants and athletes.

By changing Sinclair's Lithuanians to Poles, Catterton sets up a conceit in which bigoted jokes against that group comment cruelly on the narrative of protagonist Jurgis/Rocky, powerfully played by Catterton himself. Delivered in harshly vaudevillian style, Michael Rylander and Jacob Grun diabolically punctuate Catterton's tribulations with sarcastic quips.

Those tribulations are portrayed as the audience is escorted to the building's three floors for this one-hour show's three acts. Extraordinary but simple imagery abounds. Fabric represents a corpse. Dirt symbolizes scatological degradation. 'Red, white, and blue' ironically equals economic royalism.

As abject poverty compels the protagonist to box, a beguiling ensemble of five performs choreographed punching that is almost too close to the audience. Rylander, reminiscent of Apollo Creed, and Catterton, play out a hypnotically stylized boxing match. The 1419 building evokes a haunting ambience of fabled tenements.

John Townsend writes regularly about theater.