Theatre in Review: Tyson vs. Ali (COIL Festival/3LD Art & Technology Center)

	Photo: Paula Court.

Just how dominant can projections be in a theatre production? Can they be the whole show? This question has driven the career of Reid Farrington, a kind of theatre auteur who has built a number of works around the daring, inventive use of video projections. His new work, Tyson vs. Ali, is arguably his most ambitious -- and still these questions remain unanswered.

Tyson vs. Ali conjures up a fight that never was because its participants, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, belonged to different generations. Yet each was famous, or notorious, far beyond the boxing ring: Cassius Clay, who morphed into the aggressively self-assertive Ali, disciple of Islam and vocal critic of the American status quo, and Tyson, whose meteoric career crashed thanks to a series of scandals (the ear-biting incident, the rape conviction, addiction, and bankruptcy after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars). The structure of Tyson vs. Ali, conceived by Farrington with Frank Boudreaux, who wrote the script, is an eight-round bout between the two champs, each round separated by a brief interlude focusing on incidents such as a joint appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show; commentary, by Don King, about why he robbed both men; and invocations of Allah by Tyson and Ali, both of whom were converts to Islam. One particularly mordant passage compares their styles of fighting, with Ali repeating, "I'm young/I'm handsome/I'm fast/And can't possibly be beat," while Tyson proclaims, "When I go to fight someone, I want to break his will, I want to take his manhood, I want to rip out his heart and show it to him."

The fight sequences, many of them recreating the boxers' most important bouts, are the thing here. Four performers switch off as Tyson and Ali, with a fifth playing the referee, who offers color commentary. The audience sits on either side of a diamond-shaped boxing ring; behind it are two large horizontal screens on which is seen footage of actual fights, as well as created content featuring members of the cast speaking to the camera. In the ring are four small vertical screens; as the principals battle, the referee repositions these screens, on which is seen more fight footage taken from television broadcasts.

As is generally the case with 3LD Productions, the production values are impressive, especially Laura K. Nicoll's choreography, which results in some impressively realistic on-stage sparring, and Juan Aboites' sound design, which vividly evokes a fight-night ambiance. Jennifer Snowdon's makeup, as seen in a series of video close-ups of fighters' horribly scarred faces, is also effective. There's much to admire in the lighting, by Laura Mroczkowski and Nick Ryckert; the costumes, by Karen Flood; and the video and set design, by Simon Harding.

And yet, for all the effort expended, Tyson vs. Ali is surprisingly lacking in impact. This is partly because the interlude sequences are not particularly illuminating or informative; the text presumes a certain level of knowledge of the boxers' careers, and audience members with only a casual, cursory knowledge of the men may find themselves confused or bored. Because Tyson and Ali are played by four actors who switch roles, neither character even has a visible profile; at times, it isn't clear who is supposed to be speaking. In any case, for long stretches of time I was focused not on the live actors but on the moving pictures behind them. The biggest problem, however, may be the effort so obviously on display; it's easy to focus on the imagery, the ever-shifting projection screens, and the roar of the recorded crowd, all at the expense of character revelation or dramatic tension. One is so constantly distracted by all this busy activity that the show's point feels largely obscured.

There are hints of interesting ideas here, of Tyson and Ali as very different, yet almost equally polarizing, black male celebrities; of their lives as creations of the media; and of their relationship to religion. All of these are rich subjects, but they require a level of investigation that Tyson vs. Ali is not prepared to provide. As a result, Farrington's production seems less an engaging historical essay than a theatrical stunt. (Fetch Clay, Make Man, Will Power's incisive drama about Ali as a prisoner of his own image, seen earlier this season at New York Theatre Workshop, has much more to say about this subject.)

Can Farrington achieve more satisfying results with his projection-based theatre? Possibly; of the three pieces by him that I've seen, the most successful was his version of A Christmas Carol, which filtered a story that every audience knows by heart through the filter of the 1,001 film and television adaptations spanning the early silent era through today. Still, one has the nagging feeling that by making technology the leading aspect of his work, he has his priorities backward. At one of his shows, one attends more to the production process than to the show itself. In theory, Farrington's aesthetic concepts are fascinating; in reality, the jury is still out on whether they can make for workable theatre. --David Barbour