The Combat of the Century stages a subjective and fictionalized version of the historical figure Jack Johnson, the first African-American boxer to be proclaimed world heavyweight champion in the early 20th century after facing Jim Jeffries, "the great white hope." The Beckett hosts until June 13 the theatrical proposal by playwright Denise Duncan, with translation by Marc Rosich, musical direction by Marco Mezquida, and a cast made up of Queralt Albinyena, Alex Brendemühl, Armando Buika, Andrea Ros, and Yolanda Sikara. The venue recovers this play after the second wave left it out of programming, just one week after its premiere at the end of October.
Johnson's story dates back to the subsequent wave of racial riots and lynchings in the United States, which sentenced him and forced him to escape the country with his wife Lucille. Barcelona will become a second home for Johnson. A city that will allow him to lead a life of excesses, luxury, and suffering, accompanied by three cabaret dancers while the ghosts of his past haunt him.
The author has confessed to us that one of the things that has most fascinated her about the exercise of documentation and research in historical archives has been delving into Barcelona between 1915 and 1918; a "hidden and vox populi world, which combines the luxury dinners of the Catalan bourgeoisie with the sordidness of the cabarets and brothels of the old Barrio Chino." Characters and spectators visit the most picturesque venues, from La Hechicera to La Pajarera, currently known as El Molino. We also immerse ourselves in the nightlife of the Excelsior, one of the main settings of the play, with nods to the wealthy sector of Barcelonan society and members of the intellectual bohemia, such as Josep Maria de Segarra or the Dadaist poet Arthur Cravan, Oscar Wilde's nephew, with whom Johnson organized a boxing match at La Monumental.
Johnson's particular story allows Duncan to confront the viewer and bring big themes to the table. Themes as complex and painful as racism, gender violence, women's emancipation, social marginalization, and the difficulty of finding our place in an unjust society, without falling into moralism or a pessimistic discourse. We are faced with strong and independent characters who, despite being mistreated by others and by life, do not let themselves be defeated, support each other, and accompany each other with hope. Each actor stages, in a certain way, the consequences of these burdens and becomes a standard-bearer of a specific struggle, without losing a complex and profound personality.
It is in this context that moments of great emotional intensity shine, such as the scene of Johnson's trial. One of the most rehearsed by the actors, which ---as Duncan tells us--- "must be worked from love." As spectators, we vibrate with a scene that, a posteriori, we discover corresponds 90% to literal words from the boxer's judicial file. By invoking the same phrases, fiction becomes a ghost and appeals to our moral responsibility. In Duncan's words: "I understand theater as a space of love and reparation that allows building a safe environment where one can face extreme situations."
In this way, the spectator manages to notice problems that were barely conscious until then, and untangle knots. Humor and irony, which run through the entire work, act as decompression elements for the dramatic scenes. These are the moments when we say: "Now I can laugh, I can relax." And it is that The Fight of the Century is full of ingenious and surreal passages. It is a show where everything adds up: sound space, light, costumes, and choreographies. It is a quasi-musical composition where each scene has a tone and sounds in a certain way. Both songs like When I get low I get high, by Ella Fitzgerald or Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, appear, as well as Music Hall performances where the double narrative plane turns spectators into actors while the cabaret dancers sing and dance among the audience.
The set of resources mentioned makes this theatrical piece a space that invites us to reflect on our society from a realistic and, at the same time, hopeful discourse. It is for all these reasons that it is worth dedicating a night to delve into the depths of La Beckett and dialogue with Duncan's dramaturgical proposal. And it is that, as Johnson says with his frank smile: "A round is three minutes, and life is three days."