Shadow Boxing

In the hour that he is on stage during the one-man play "Shadow Boxing," Jonny Collis-Scurll does some 50 pushups, hits a punching bag more than 100 times, and spends most of the rest of his time jabbing the air or pummeling invisible opponents, all while delivering a monologue written by British actor James Gaddas. But "Shadow Boxing," as it turns out, is not just a play about boxing. It is also a coming-out story.

In this first of the nine shows in this year's Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, Collis-Scurll plays Flynn, the son of a washed-out boxer, who has more success than his father in the pugilist's art. More than halfway through the play, we learn that Flynn is gay.

It is this fresh twist, and Collis-Scurll's vivid and athletic performance, that rescues "Shadow Boxing" from two deficiencies in the script. The first is the sketchiness of the other characters that the actor plays (or plays against), so that we sometimes get only a general idea of what is going on. The second is that not content with the physical poetry-in-motion of this brutal sport, playwright Gaddas slips into making Flynn speak like a poet: At one point, Flynn describes his boxing gloves as "lances of scarlet on rods of steel."

These verbal lapses are only occasional and forgivable. Poets since Homer have written odes to "the sweet science," and there has been many a friendship between fighters and writers: George Bernard Shaw and Gene Tunney, Norman Mailer and José Torres, and, most improbably, Muhammad Ali and Marianne Moore, who was 55 years older and a couple of feet shorter. Torres became a writer himself, and Ali, as we all know, was the master of taunting doggerel. So maybe the character's words in "Shadow Boxing" only seem improbable. In any case, the rhythm is right.

Presented by Cross Cut as part of Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., NYC. Nov. 6–20. Schedule varies. (212 )279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.