Rhona Foulis
posted 12 December 2005

This is 'arguably the first American play written by a black writer of the modern era', the Tricycle's programme informs us. Walk Hard - Talk Loud premiered at the groundbreaking American Negro Theater in 1944 and forms the first of the Trike's current season of African American plays. Radical for its time, does Abram Hill's play still resonate today?

Andy is a shoe shiner working on the streets of New York, desperate to escape the city and the enduring racial persecution of post-Depression America. Mack is a boxing agent, who spies an opportunity to turn Andy's angst into aggression in the ring and make him a star. Hill's portrait of American boxing in the 1940s draws us into a world of complex race relations and the politics of freedom in a burgeoning capitalist society. 'We're all fighting to be free', Mack rationalises, but freedom is a relative concept. Mack seeks financial freedom and promotion within an industry of white Fat Cats; Andy seeks racial invisibility, to be free from the politics of his race. But the boxing ring is no refuge from the rules of the street and Andy is tormented by verbal abuse from his spectators. In the ring, the black boxer is even more defined by his body, deemed an animalistic opponent, to be subdued by the white judges who govern the game.

Hill subverts the animalistic depiction of the black boxer in contemporary American films, portraying Andy as sharp, intelligent and utterly self-willed. In one scene, Andy and Mack check into a Michigan hotel, but the receptionist will not admit a black boxer as the hotel is also hosting the white boxing judges. Mack tries to persuade Andy to bunk with the black bellboy, but Andy defiantly refuses. This black boxer is more than his body; outside of the game, he is an individual with free speech and a free mind. Furthermore, Andy's refusal to reside with the bellboy is indicative of his own racial politics. Distrustful, he alienates himself from everyone involved in the game. His trainer argues: 'Us coloured folks gotta stick together', but Andy opts out of racial solidarity, resisting any form of racial distinction.

'The trouble with that boy is that he just won't stay in his place', warns Lou, Mack's tyrannical boss. Here, Hill is socially realistic in his portrayal of a strong black man: Andy is ultimately quashed by the power structure of white management. After his public show of resilience in the hotel, the Michigan fight is fixed so that the white favourite 'homeboy' wins. Managerial and media politics is a game that Andy won't play. Despite a second chance to return to the ring, Andy frees himself from the fight, choosing instead to return home, to his father, girlfriend and grandmother, who always raised him to 'walk hard and talk loud'.

Walk Hard - Talk Loud broke theatrical ground by placing strong, well-rounded black characters at the centre of a dramatic narrative, and developing that narrative from their perspective on contemporary black issues. Hill's insightful and astute play conveys the oppression and frustration of a white, capitalist system, for both white and black citizens, but removes his black characters from the system that would otherwise objectify them. Walk Hard's sketch of 1940s America opens up political and social questions about the meaning of freedom, integration versus segregation, and the potential cost of both of these - questions that do still resonate, not least in the current dialogue of 'multiculturalism'.

Disappointingly, director Nicolas Kent has done nothing dramatically ambitious to match the radicalism of Abram Hill's drama, instead turning the play into a clichéd story of freedom. The large cast is largely good, with particularly steady performances from Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Andy and a delightful Carmen Munroe as his Grandmother Becky. Mike Britton's shifting sets also impress in their 1940s design. But clunky scene changes contribute to a generally slow and artistically flat production, knocking out the invigoration of Hill's original drama.

Till 24 December 2005