Frankie Lucas might not be a household name as a boxer but he could have been a contender for it. A Windrush-era child from St Vincent, he joined his north London boxing club at nine, showing clear talent. He went on to win a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games, against the odds, before tragic derailment into bad mental health.
This production, written by Lisa Lintott, charts his rise and fall but is so much in thrall to biographical chronology and blow-by-blow fight reports that the drama fails to come to life. We hear from his girlfriend, Gene (Llewella Gideon), and son, Michael (Daniel Francis-Swaby), but they are narrators offering summaries rather than roundly drawn characters with inner worlds. We never access the emotional world of Lucas (Jazz Lintott, the writer’s son) either.
In a production co-directed by Philip J Morris and Xanthus, we often see Lucas sparring on Dacre Bracey’s set, which is a boxing ring within a domestic setting. He is light on his feet as he dances with real or imaginary opponents, and the drama is interspersed with a soundtrack that captures the passing of time though song.
But he loses his energy, his performance deflated and voice flat. The rest of the cast, even the charismatic Gideon, are as inert. It becomes a grind, at over two hours, with little intimacy or tension.
In spite of winning the national middleweight title at the age of 18, we are told that Lucas was not chosen for Britain’s 1972 Olympic squad or for the Commonwealth Games. So his amateur boxing club manager (Cyril Blake) has the inspired idea he should represent St Vincent instead. He goes on to knock Britain out of the contest – and win his gold. The drama in this alone is enough to carry a play, but like everything else, we are told rather than shown its impact.
Lucas’s peer group of boxers included Frank Bruno, whose personal life took a similar turn when he was sectioned, while the life of Vernon Vanriel, another Windrush generation boxer, was marked by prejudice and depression. Lucas’s trajectory, within this bigger picture, follows a pattern of mental illness intersecting with bigger systemic forces. There is some attempt to draw this out but it is dramatically ineffective. You should feel so much more for Lucas than you do.
For me this story has a personal resonance: Lucas, who died last year, spent his last days in the same London care home as my father. I passed him often and knew he had been a boxer, long ago. In those fleeting exchanges I felt a keen sense of Lucas’s untold story. But in this production you do not feel its magnitude. Sadly, a big miss.
At Park theatre, London, until 30 November
