Beautiful Burnout

Synopsis

Four young men and a battling lassie are training in a Glasgow gym. They want to be champions and win fistfuls of money. They are learning to land 950 punches out of 1000, like Calzaghe. Beautiful Burnout tells a bruising and lyrical tale of aspirations and counterpunches, delivered in a visceral, hearts-in-yer-mouth production about one of the most controversial sports of our time.

Our Review:

17 September 2010

For the year’s other big play on the sport, Roy Williams’ Sucker Punch, the Royal Court Theatre was transformed into a boxing ring; here, for the first tour stop of Bryony Lavery’s Beautiful Burnout, a famous boxing ring – at the York Hall Centre in London’s East End, care of the Barbican – is transformed into a theatre, with astounding results. The venue, in which you can almost smell the accumulated stench of years of sweat and toil, fits this highly visceral production like, um, a glove. So much so, it’s hard to imagine how it could have quite the same impact elsewhere.

The setting, in combination with Frantic Assembly’s trademark mix of stylised movement, choreography, video design and musical blasts, creates a theatrical experience that’s a true “event”. But, while it got my heart physically thumping for its speed, style and visual flair, it didn’t grab that organ emotionally as much as I’d hoped.

Only the female characters – mother (f...

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Latest User Review

martin b - 29 September 2010:

I thought the play was okay but I think the Frantic Assembly dance and movement pyrotechnics disguised the fact that beneath lay a rather hackneyed and uninspired play with little in the way of characters or character development. ...

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