Apr 18, 2008

Closeted boxers portray lovers, fighters

By John Angell Grant / Theater Reviewer

Madonna has plans to direct a movie about gay Latin American boxers in the United States in the late 1950s. The stage play on which this movie is based, "Blade to the Heat," is currently running at San Jose Stage Company, produced with San Francisco's Thick Description.

"Blade to the Heat" is an unusual and thought-provoking play. It tells the story of Latin American fighters in identity crisis, who have intertwined fighting and sex, and who struggle to separate the two. In a story set in 1959, none of these men wants to be called gay.

The play is built around a series of matches and rematches among three fighters jockeying for a championship. Challenging each other about sexual manhood turns out to be part of the gamesmanship of competition.

Sophia Fong's vibrant set design features a boxing ring center stage, with a couple of openings abstracted in the ropes. A doorway backdrop upstage, behind a scrim, allows the ring to double as a nightclub and various other locations.

Two older trainers, and the boxers' male and female romantic interests surround the ring to watch the story of the three men, have relationships with them, and throw in bits of wisdom and discord about life.

The play was written by Oliver Mayer, a former boxer and current University of Southern California playwriting teacher, who also wrote the upcoming Lindsay Lohan tango film "Dare to Love Me."

Here and there in "Blade to the Heat" the psychological analysis gets a little simplistic and didactic, but overall the story is absorbing. Thematically, it tells about how men conflate fighting, love and sex. Each of the play's three boxers has a different take on his own sexuality. Often the path of boxing becomes a surrogate for figuring out sexual identity.

In addition to being a love story, "Blade to the Heat" is also a tale of mixed race identity. How well can a Mexican fighter named Pete Quinn do in a quest for the championship, especially if he might be gay? Los Angeles playwright Mayer is himself of mixed race, and a former boxer.

Running 94 minutes without an intermission, the play is written in a quick cinematic style, with lots of short scenes, paced alternately fast and slow by director Tony Kelley. The boxing choreography offers many intimate hugging clinches between men, bare-chested and sweaty. There is some male nudity.

As fighter Mantequilla Decima, Bay Area acting legend Peter Callender reprises a role he first played 11 years ago. Johnny Moreno is the mixed-race fighter Quinn, carrying a huge inferiority complex and very low self-esteem.

As the third boxer, Victor Ballesteros is aggressive as a ring challenger attacking the sexuality of his opponents.

Vontress Mitchell turns in a nice performance as a Jackie Wilson/James Brown nightclub impersonator, and the romantic interest of one of the fighters. As the one woman in the cast, Melissa Navarro is effective as a full-charge, hot-tempered girlfriend.

This is a story about gay men struggling to come out of the closet in 1959. Its equation of fighting and love holds important information about how human beings relate to each other.

Rating: Three and a half stars

E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@yahoo.com.