Review: ‘The Royale’ Harks Back to the Fighter Jack Johnson

Jay Jackson has found the zone, a place where all he hears is the upbeat percussion of his own thoughts and the drumming of flesh hitting flesh. A declaration of satisfaction purrs out of this perfectly proportioned giant, delivered both to himself and to the young opponent who has surprised him by giving almost as good as he gets: “We’re making music, boy.”

That’s the music of the sweet science of boxing. And it has seldom been played as quietly or as resonantly as it is in “The Royale,” Marco Ramirez’s absorbing drama about a black prizefighter in the early 20th century, which opened on Monday night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. That this production never deploys real physical blows in recreating life in the ring is by no means to say that it doesn’t pack a punch.

Staged with a swift, stark lyricism by the impossibly versatile Rachel Chavkin, “The Royale” boldly takes on and reorients a familiar genre and a familiar tale. Jay Jackson (played by Khris Davis), known in the trade and tabloids as Sport and “the black bringer of retribution,” is yet another character inspired by Jack Johnson (1878-1946), the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion.

Johnson’s life has been the basis for Howard Sackler’s “The Great White Hope,” the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning play (and 1970 movie) that sealed the stardom of James Earl Jones; a two-part Ken Burns television documentary (“Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson”); and music by Miles Davis and Mos Def. His career both anticipated the rise of the celebrity athlete and spotlighted the racial antagonism festering in the age of Jim Crow.

It’s a complicated and ambivalent tale that bears far more social freight than the usual beat-the-odds sports melodrama. But when reading and watching factual and fictional accounts of Johnson’s fights — especially the historic 1910 match in which he retained his title by defeating the former champion James L. Jeffries, a white man — it’s hard not to experience the anxious, invested thrills that come with rooting for an underdog hero on the ropes.

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From left, McKinley Belcher lll, Khris Davis and Clarke Peters in “The Royale.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

First staged at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles in 2013, “The Royale” does not traffic in the expected adrenaline-boosting staples of such fare. Its extraordinarily efficient 90 minutes progress at a calm, almost ceremonial pace, and we are never invited to feel the sensuous rush associated with boxing movies of both the upper (“Rocky”) and downer (“Raging Bull”) varieties.

True, the play begins and concludes with matches of bruising, bloodying violence. Yet as staged by Ms. Chavkin, these encounters are almost entirely free of physical contact. That’s because they’re taking place in another, more privileged arena, to which we have been allowed direct access — the uncommonly focused mind of Jay Jackson.

So in the opening sequence, in which Jay is paired against an engagingly green up-and-comer called Fish (played by McKinley Belcher III), the two men are often on different sides of the stage, which has been converted into a simple wooden space (by the set designer Nick Vaughan) that speaks of a still rough-hewed America. We know how the fight is proceeding by the running internal commentary each sustains.

When they land punches, the contact is conveyed by one or the other jumping hard with both feet on the canvas, or hoisting a movable railing. Though a rapport is struck between these men — Fish will be hired as Jay’s sparring partner — the ring still feels like the loneliest place in the world.

This is true for Jay despite his having an ever-present and supportive team. It includes his trainer, Wynton (the estimable Clarke Peters), and his white manager and promoter, Max (John Lavelle), whose ingrained prejudices keep slipping into view like an untucked shirttail.

Mr. Lavelle also portrays the various newspaper reporters who keep firing off questions at the rising black star, especially once the retired but still undefeated world champion (here named Bixby) agrees to fight Jay, who becomes the first African-American contender for the world title. Montego Glover (a Tony nominee for “Memphis”) shows up late in the play to assume a reverberant double role.

They make up the entire cast of this production, and they all embody their parts with laser sharpness. Mr. Peters does beautifully by the poetic monologue — describing his first experience fighting for money — that gives the play its title.

Though they engage us unconditionally, none of the performers provide a full, idiosyncratic character. But that kind of portraiture is not the intention here. There are the expected references to Jay’s serial conquests of white women (a preference that helped bring down the real Jack Johnson and was the center of “The Great White Hope”) and his love of sartorial sumptuousness, but they are not center stage here.

For the great subject of “The Royale,” which has been given such original and graceful theatrical form, is the selfish single-mindedness required of champions, and the repercussions such a focus has when it’s exercised by a black man in a white man’s world. Mr. Davis embodies this point of view with a stunning, arrogant innocence that charms and, in a subliminal way, terrifies.

Occasionally the script tips into overstatement and overexplanation. Was it really necessary to have a blunt, sentimental revelation of the childhood incident that drives Jay’s hunger for success? And historical purists may be annoyed by the anachronistic prominence of radio broadcasts in the play’s final scenes.

But you don’t feel like picking apart the individual elements when they cohere into such an organic whole. The show — which features stealthily effective sound (by Matt Hubbs) and lighting (by Austin R. Smith) — is accented throughout by the rhythmic punctuation of loud, abrupt hand claps and barked-out “hahs!” that suggest anger trapped in laughter.

Those sounds set the rhythms for Jay’s life in the public eye. He is as regimented and confined by them as a classical ballet dancer is by choreography.

It’s the rhythm that keeps him moving determinedly forward, allowing him to triumph as a fighter and to keep his cool when dealing with the far mightier opponent of institutionalized racism. But when the clapping and the laughing finally stop, in a blindingly bright moment of victory, the silence is so ominous it deafens.