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“I can’t praise Lincoln Center Theater too strongly” for daring to mount this revival, said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. Before its opening at the Belasco, Clifford Odets’s 1937 drama about a young Italian-American violinist tempted by a lucrative career in boxing hadn’t been staged as a straight play on Broadway since 1952. Small wonder: “It has 19 speaking roles and requires five sets,” not to mention dialogue that, while capturing the “coarse immigrant patter” of the era, could come across today as irredeemably hokey. Underneath it all, though, lies “a true and telling parable” of American ambition and its perils, and director Bartlett Sher has given it “a production of the utmost splendor.”
That’s because the show is “as much sung as performed,” said Scott Brown in New York magazine. Sher was no doubt conscious of the fact that stark realism and Odets’s “musical palookaspeak” don’t exactly go together. So he chose to stage Golden Boy as a “broad, brassy grand opera,” with the drama heightened and the performers playing to the balcony. Remarkably, he’s managed to keep all of them “in the same mighty key.” Seth Numrich gives “a white-hot performance” as Joe Bonaparte, a gifted musician who, to the dismay of his father (Tony Shalhoub), becomes a mob-backed contender in the ring instead of a virtuoso. Shalhoub is likewise astonishing: Despite having to “deliver an entire show in a red-sauce accent,” his restrained, layered performance never comes close to maudlin.
At times, the show is “dragged down by predictable plot mechanics,” said Charles Isherwood in The New York Times. There’s never a doubt, for example, that Joe’s foray into the ring will end tragically. But if the play’s structure seems dated, the central conflict is eternally resonant—“Do you spend your life trying to shine in a world that values only the mighty dollar, or seek instead to fulfill a humbler, more humane destiny?” Joe’s father may long for his son to have, in his words, “truthful success,” but that “remains as elusive a goal today” as it was 75 years ago.
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Should you downsize for retirement? Here's what to consider.The Explainer Moving to a smaller place may seem easier, but there are also some real benefits to staying put
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What to do if you want to move but don't want to give up your low mortgage ratethe explainer 30-year mortgage rates are currently averaging 7% — and homeowners who secured rates closer to 3% during the pandemic are reluctant to sell their homes
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Crossword: September 1, 2025The Week's daily crossword
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.