Review: Champion at Live Theatre, Newcastle
Ishy Din's new play recalls Muhammad Ali's Tyneside visit
Ishy Din’s new play is as the title proclaims – a champion piece of writing, as honed and toned as a boxer’s torso and so beautifully presented and performed that you’ll want to punch the air.
Muhammad Ali, as we learn, became world heavyweight boxing champion at the tender age of 22. An international icon, he talked the talk (boy, did he talk!) and walked the walk, touching people in different ways.
The play, directed by Jack McNamara who commissioned it for Live, takes us back to a moment in time, the extraordinary visit by Ali to South Shields in 1977, hot on the heels of the Queen on her Silver Jubilee tour of the country (although it wasn’t planned that way).
We see it from the perspective of a mixed race family still in mourning a year after the death of the father, who was from Pakistan, and dealing with racial prejudice in its various unpleasant shades.
Mum Sheila, white and of Irish heritage (and imbued with fierce but tender defiance by the versatile Christina Berriman Dawson, fresh from panto at the Theatre Royal) has suffered from it since her choice of husband split her from her family.
Eldest son Bilal, played by Jack Robertson (late of Gerry & Sewell), is equally alive to the sneering, jeering and potential beatings, and armours himself against it all by anglicising his name and adopting skinhead gear.
Angry and defensive he might be, but he loves Muhammad Ali and is excited when he learns of the boxer’s visit.
Darker skinned Azeem, still at school and in thrall to the mosque, is initially unenthusiastic, as is Sheila who’s positively anti (Ali, we also discover, was not without his faults).
Bringing this complex young character to life is professional debutant Daniel Zareie and amid all the experience mustered for this production his contribution merits special mention.
Still studying on the Theatre Royal’s Project A acting course, he’s rarely out of the spotlight here but delivers such an assured performance you’d swear he was born to it.
His Azeem, clever, bookish and burdened by familial expectation, is learning the hard way that his life’s course might not be easy.
While his mother and brother try in their clumsy but well-meaning ways to steer him clear of trouble, he’s his own man, keener on art and photography than the path to medicine or accountancy.
The bruises, when they come, look horribly real, made more so by Zareie’s commendable acting.
All unfolds, with much humour to leaven the serious issues at stake, on a set by Amy Watts that effectively mimics a boxing ring.
Thus the sport at which Ali excelled envelopes the action, so at key moments we become spectators to an imagined bout as opposing forces, personal and societal, square up as if in the red and blue corners.
Confrontation is crystallised in these arresting theatrical outtakes, greatly aided by the effects of lighting (take a bow, Drummond Orr) and sound (Matthew Tuckey).
And it all comes together at the end quite beautifully. Cue loud applause for a play that makes a case for empathy and understanding while entertaining hugely.
Champion runs until Saturday, March 8. Find ticket details on the Live Theatre website or call the box office on 0191 232 1232.