Golden Boy

In its present state, Golden Boy is a tough, slick and inventive outline for what might become the most exciting musical drama since Gypsy. When it flexes its muscles in music and dance, it has the aura of excitement of a prize fight. But the external glitter does not hide the fact that it has muscle without marrow, a shiny surface but no depth.

The book, adapted from his own play by the late Clifford Odets just before he died, turns its original hero, Joe Bonaparte, an Italian boy torn between the warring worlds of art (represented by a possible career as a concert violinist) and commercial success (prizefighing) into Joe Wellington, a Negro with a racial chip weighing heavily on his shoulder and a desire to "show them who the hell I am." This change entails the loss of the conflict which informed and strengthened the entire texture of the earlier version. Only Joe's father remains, a stock conscience-figure who comments on the concert piano career that Joe could have pursued. The alternative world of music has become a convenience in plotting rather than an impelling drive. The dramatic success of the musical thus depends entirely upon the development of Joe's character. But we get personality instead.

There are definite compensations, however. In less than two hours, there are 21 musical numbers of what is generally a first-rate score. Each of the numbers captures one particular emotion in both music and lyrics, and derives its impetus from the immediate context. Several Harlem playground songs, infectiously rendered by leading man Sammy Davis and two boys, lead into a dialogue accented by carousel music. Then, in "There's a Party Going On," rhythmically built upon the carousel setting and physically sung in the playground of his youth, Davis dreams his specious adult dreams of the world outside that he would like to be his.

The only low point in the score is a tasteless lament for Harlem: "Don't Forget 127th Street," contains lyrics like "there's no slum like your own . . . the neighborhood is classy--we've got rats as big as Lassie . . . H is for the heroin they sell here. A is for the alleys where we play . . ."The audience loved it. There was even a loud round of applause just after a mention of the white man's wild ideas about the Negro's dancing ability. This, of course, was followed by an amazing display of dancing from the chorus. Such a number passes for "social consciousness" but merely panders to the self-congratulatory back-patting that audiences love to indulge in as they say, "I understand."

The book, in need of much revision, does little more than bridge the gaps between the numbers--and it does so in the self-conscious, soap-operaish tones of daytime television. Joe's final realization, "I wasn't good enough to be a sparrow; I wanted to be an eagle," seemingly comes right out of the air and is, quiet literally, for the birds. The dialogue skips from cliches to abstract expressions of feeling so quickly and glibly that it neither convinces nor involves us. It only approximates emotion. The book neither unites the songs, nor equals their hard-hitting exactness of expression.

Sammy Davis is not yet effective as an actor. His obvious sincerity is an inadequate and rather embarrassing substitute for abiltiy. The quickly paced second act centers completely on Joe and allows Davis to sing nine numbers, each denoting a different stage in Joe's movement toward disaster. Happily, Davis is a great song stylist and impersonator. In each song he assumes a different pose. His delivery has a pulsating energy and clarity of effect. He yearns wistfully in a large, throaty voice for girls "with skin as white as cream." Or, as in 'Colorful," he stands smirking with his hands poised effeminately and spits out in a jazzy, mocking voice, "As the Duchess of Windsor might say, Black is me." The sheer force of Davis's personality hides his and the script's failure to create a complete character.

Many of the other performers, particularly Paula Wayne, who plays Joe's white girlfriend and his manager's mistress, give life to roles the book only sketches out. The sparse sets are brilliantly backed by a series of realistic and impressionistic photographs of New York projected on screens. Tony Walton's designs do much of the work of director Peter Coe. These afford continuous movement from scene to scene and establish changes of emotional coloring within scenes and songs by their own changes in perspective and color.

Golden Boy gets close to its main character only in song. The original play's conflict has been exchanged for a drive forward, a hurling action toward the inevitable end, accented by the show's slick surface and fast movement. We feel the measure of Joe Wellington as different pressures reveal themselves at different points of his career, but we do not come in close contact with the source of these pressures in the man himself. Golden Boy has many moments that are tangentially exciting. As of now, its inventiveness has not become true creation.