My Melodrama
Phwoar, there is nothing like the almighty power of an excellent ensemble cast, all performing to bring out the best in each other. Such is the case in this revival of Golden Boy, which had me thoroughly invested for its...
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Golden Boy
Clifford Odets is one of the most famous American playwrights, perhaps not quite in the same league as his peers (Miller, Williams etc), but that means that revivals of his work are less common. It takes place in 1930s New York at the height of the Depression, and centers around Joe Bonaparte who is both a gifted young violinist and a talented boxer. Joe is a young man torn between the seductive promise of the American Dream and the quiet honour of a decent life. With Josh O’Connor playing the lead and a very strong cast of actors around him, this is set to be a brilliant and very intense night of theatre.
Run Time
2 hours, 30 minutes
Venue
Dates
From: September 8th, 2026
Until: October 31st, 2026
What our culture curators are saying
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A good man is hard to find, Flannery O’Connor tells us. A golden boy is harder.
Odets wrote the play in 1937 after a spell in Hollywood, and it’s hard not to read it as a confession: an artist choosing between the instrument and the purse. Joe Bonaparte trades his violin for boxing gloves, and the evening charts what that costs. O’Connor plays him as a cheeky dreamer with the swagger the American dream demands. His arrogance is less a flaw than a form of fuel. Around him, the father and Fuselli pull at Joe’s soul from opposite corners. One offers a violin, the other a contract, and both are wrapped as gifts. The production never judges the choice, which makes it hurt more.
The fight never stays in the ring. It gets into the dialogue, so every exchange is a bout of feints, jabs and clinches, and the audience never quite gets its guard down. It’s an insistently male world, carried as much by voice as by body. The accents are immaculate. Somewhere offstage, an accent coach has earned a title belt.
The set design punches well above its weight. Like if Vuillard and Vermeer had a child in New York, the set is perfectly calibrated and holds the whole world in a small frame. The musicians play the interludes between scenes like a chorus that has forgotten its lines and remembered the tune. The camera is also a very bold stroke: a filmic eye that nods to Rocky and, more pointedly, Raging Bull, another portrait of a man undone by his ego and his hunger for validation. Its finest moment is Joe’s first punch, framed like the frame a film would cut to.
Then there are O’Connor’s hands. I couldn’t stop staring at them. They flicker like moths near a flame, large and elegant, and seem to act on their own. It can’t be accidental. This is a play about a young man who must decide what his hands are for, and death is the price of his answer. Joe’s arc bends from virtuoso to bravado, yet in my view, the hands stay loyal to the violin long after the man has left it. The best performances hold a secret the character doesn’t know he’s keeping. This one keeps it in plain sight.