It's not a knockout

Abram Hill's long-forgotten play is a feisty, often furious look at the African-American experience at the end of the Depression.

The structure for this theme is one man's rise and fall in the Mob-controlled boxing game but somehow Nicolas Kent's production lacks the punch you'd expect. Shoeshine boy Andy Whitman is 'discovered' on a street corner by boxing manager Mack (a delightfully downtrodden Mac McDonald).

Soon, he's ditched his college plans and is sending opponents flying left, right and centre in the pursuit of riches. But boxing kingpin Lou Foster (Rupert Farley in full-on, James Cagney gangster mode) doesn't like the fact this new 'fighting Sambo' is an 'uppity nigger' who dares to speak up for himself, and sets about securing his downfall.

Mike Britton's well-designed set slips us smoothly from front room to boxing gym to ringside and there are some lively performances here, from Joseph Marcell as Andy's dad, Carmen Munroe as grandma Becky and Stephen Beckett as gauche boxing star Larry Batchello.

But Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's constant righteous, fist-clenching fury as Andy doesn't allow for much visible character development and makes his volte-face at the end of the play feel completely nonsensical.

With nearly everyone struggling to convey a dialect-heavy New York patter, simple patterns of natural speech often disappear under a flurry of exclamation marks: not helped by the declamatory nature of most lines. But the biggest problem is pacing.

At around two and a half hours, Walk Hard — Talk Loud drags badly in the second half and peters out rather than delivering a knockout blow.

Walk Hard