REMOUNT - ROSEWOOD CENTER FOR FAMILY ARTS
NOVEMBER 15 - DECEMBER 2, 2007

The Boxer by Matt Lyle

Director...	Matt Lyle
Stage Manager...	Cat Wallis
Costumes...	Aaron Turner
Props/Set...	Kim Lyle & Matt Lyle
Lighting...	Joyous Israel
Projectionist...	Kristin VanSickle
Videos by...	Karl Schaeffer
Choreography...	Nancy Schaeffer
Video Assistant...	Phillip Schaeffer
Run Crew...	Caleb W. Massey
Musicians...	B. Wolf
	Johnny Sequenzia
Featuring...
Ben Bryant as Worker, Goon, Bavarian Beast
Tara Christensen as Dancing Girl, Fairy
Steve Jones as Boss Man, Announcer
Kim Lyle as Velma
Kineta Massey as Worker, Fairy, Ring Girl Gorilla
Joel McDonald as Worker, Trainer, Goon
Jeff Swearingen as The Boxer
Laurie Williamson as Dancing Girl, Fairy
Jennifer Youle as Sexy Waitress, Fairy

• Park Cities Review
• Dallas Observer Review
• Dallas Morning News Review
• Pegasus News Review

Theater Review: The Boxer
A little guy squares off against the Bavarian Beast

November 29, 2007 By GLEN ARBERY / People Newspapers

Hilarious as it is, The Boxer at Bootstraps Comedy Theater gets better the more you think about it. Matt Lyle's silent play about a girl named Velma (Kim Lyle), who has to dress as a man to get work (and keep her virtue) during the Depression, has more going on amid the slapstick than you'd think.

An homage to the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton (among others), The Boxer picks up two ponderous themes, poverty and tyranny, and handles them with the kind of dexterity that reveals what comedy can do for us in hard times.

More than one person has said the Germans could have handled Hitler best by mocking him as Chaplin does in The Great Dictator or as Lyle does here with the proto-Nazi Nietzsche admired: "the blond beast splendidly roaming around in its lust for loot and victory."

I'm not sure Nietzsche had this Bavarian Beast (Ben Bryant) in mind, this stomper and roarer who tears off an arm and sticks his straw in the bloody part to suck out the marrow, but it's one of the funniest thing I've seen onstage in Dallas.

Fired for being a pansy — she can't make herself pinch the enticingly proffered bottom of the waitress (Jennifer Youle) — Velma mopes about until she meets the boxer in training (Jeff Swearingen), inadvertently knocks his trainer silly, and takes over the job herself.

Hiding her gender but falling in love at the same time, she visits the boxer's tiny apartment, hears about the poor mother (hilariously sentimental film clip) he has to support by defeating the Bavarian Beast, and tries to get the boy ready to fight.

Karl Schaeffer's two filmed sequences of "training montage" are perfect bookends for the pre-fight preparations. If you can keep a smile off your face while Jeff Swearingen snatches flies from the air behind his back with chopsticks, you must be made of sterner stuff than Ebenezer Scrooge.

The girl-as-boy, pulled off with aplomb by Kim Lyle, draws on all kinds of comic traditions, including many of Shakespeare's comedies, and it makes for a very funny "discovery" scene here and a backhanded feminist point. But it's not just the large comic elements that make it so much fun — it's the way B. Wolf and Johnny Sequenzia use their music for perfectly timed comic effects. It's a host of little touches from beginning to end.

This hour-long play deserves big audiences. It's hurt a little by being outside its original context in the Festival of Independent Theatres last summer, simply because it has the feel of a play that ought to be encountered in the middle of activity, not one that ought to stand alone way out at the Rosewood Center. But it's a small classic not to be missed.

KNOCKOUT
The Boxer packs a sweet punch at DCT

November 22, 2007 By ELAINE LINER / The Dallas Observer

The Boxer is brilliant. The locally grown one-act play that charmed audiences at last summer's Festival of Independent Theatres is now at Dallas Children's Theater, with the same cast and an even more polished staging by Dallas writer-director Matt Lyle.

What a gem. In a lively 60 minutes, Lyle's darling comedy about a young woman masquerading as a man to train a bantam-weight prizefighter speaks volumes about life, love and the wonders of live theater. And it says everything without uttering a word.

Lyle and his young Bootstraps Comedy Theater players have created a newfangled take on an old-fashioned medium: silent film. An upstage movie screen flashes black and white title cards behind the live actors. Characters on the stage interact with characters in filmed sequences, a tricky bit of fancy footwork that's impeccably timed and hilarious.

They're pantomiming in the style of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd—rubbery knees, wide eyes, twitchy mouths, shrugged shoulders, exaggerated reactions. The Boxer pays affectionate tribute to all the silent greats. Pianist B. Wolf adds to the old-timey feel by playing a rinky-tink score full of cleverly cued references to "Eye of the Tiger" and "Thriller." Johnny Sequenzia handles mandolin, banjo and percussion.

The playwright's actress-wife Kim gets the lead as Velma, the Little Tramp-like ragamuffin forced to don men's clothes to land a job digging ditches. An accidental meeting with a hapless pugilist (Jeff Swearingen) leads Velma to take on the duties of trainer-manager for the fighter's big bout against the fearsome Bavarian Beast (Ben Bryant). The little boxer needs the winnings for his "sick ma," and he's so determined to earn the prize honestly, he even turns down an offer of more cash to take a dive. Thing is, he has no chance of taking down the hulking Beast in the ring. That is, unless Velma...

Lyle knows his silent movie formula backward and forward, working in stock characters such as the mean, mustachioed boss (Steve Jones), the "Goon" (Joel McDonald), the saucy barmaid (Jennifer Youle) and flirty dancing girls (Tara Christensen, Laurie Williamson). He gives us a drunk scene, a comic chase with rowboats and a gorilla, and the perfect twist at the end that makes Velma both hero and heroine and allows her boxer boy to believe he's a champ, if only briefly.

Laughs build on laughs as the physical comedy grows more complicated by the minute. These actors, particularly Kim Lyle, Swearingen and McDonald, are beautiful mimes—the hours it must have taken to work out their routines.

It's such a pleasure to see a piece of theater from artists who genuinely care about giving the audience a good time. There's a wholesome-yet-wistful sentimentality about this show that's missing from so many new plays. It has real family appeal.

As Velma falls for her skinny fighter, she dreams of revealing her real identity to him (a funny bit introduced by a quartet of flat-footed fairies), and we fall in love with both of them. We remember for ourselves that happy little twinge that comes from the first throes of romance.

Sigh, such sweet, sweet science.

BOOTSTRAPS' 'THE BOXER' PACKS A WINNING HOOK
Play pays homage to silent film comedies

November 19, 2007 LAWSON TAITTE/ The Dallas Morning News

A love story between a boxer and his trainer? It's not weird, as you might expect – it's as charming as a frilly valentine.

Bootstraps Comedy Theater revived its original play The Boxer at Dallas Children's Theater's Rosewood Center for Family Arts this weekend. The show, which lasts only an hour, was the hit of this summer's Festival of Independent Theatres and already has won three Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum awards.

Bootstraps artistic director Matt Lyle wrote and directed The Boxer, which stars his wife, Kim Lyle. She plays Velma, a Depression-era woman who has to dress as a man to earn a living respectably. After getting fired from a construction job because her fellow workers think she's not macho enough, she stumbles across a fighter (Jeff Swearingen) who has just lost his trainer. So she signs on for the assignment.

Eventually the two conquer the hideous Bavarian Beast (Ben Bryant) and win the money they need. The boxer finally realizes that Velma is a woman – a woman who has always loved him – and the pair lives happily ever after.

Mr. Lyle's gimmick is that the entire play takes place without a word being uttered. The Boxer pays homage to the great silent film comedies. Ms. Lyle's character owes much to Charlie Chaplin's Tramp, though she doesn't just imitate the original. Mr. Swearingen's performance is entirely in the tradition of Buster Keaton's stone-faced physical comedy.

The actors are silent, but the play isn't. Pianist B. Wolf performs an improvised score that uses themes borrowed from everybody from Richard Wagner to Frederick Loewe.

Johnny Sequenzia adds some plucked notes and a lot of sound effects. He gets as many laughs by banging on pot lids as the actors do with their pratfalls and double takes.

Mr. Swearingen, one of Dallas' funniest actors, displays admirable restraint in his deadpan antics here. His character, if you step back to consider it, is remarkably ineffectual. But Mr. Swearingen emanates a cool charisma that makes Velma's loyal affection entirely believable.

Ms. Lyle is so feminine, even when dressed as a man, that the play's premise sometimes feels strained. But the script gives her several opportunities to let her hair down, quite literally, in dream sequences and such. That's when The Boxer really captivates us.

It's a good old boy-girl romance, after all, and Ms. Lyle puts us in the mood for hearts and flowers – despite wearing a guy's suit during most of the show.

November 19, 2007 MARK BRIAN SONNA/Pegasus News

Stop what you are doing right now and order your tickets to go see The Boxer.

Okay, you can now continue reading this review.

The Boxer currently presented by Bootstraps Comedy Theater and playing at the Rosewood Center for Family Arts is one of the freshest most original plays I've seen. The premise is so simply absurd it's brilliant: do a piece of theatre as if it were a silent film. No dialogue, just a few projected words on a screen, and some delicious silent film style acting on stage. Matt Lyle, the genius behind this production, has created a piece of theatrical confection that delights, amuses, and entertains. Mr. Lyle is very smart in keeping the show to its 60 minute length; any longer the joke might have worn out. By keeping it short he is able pack it full of quality making the show well worth the price of admission.

The Boxer could be a Mack Sennett "three reeler" film. Mr. Lyle has done his research and captured some of the comedic gesticulation from this mostly forgotten era of film and brought it back to life. It helps that the entire troupe of is competent and talented. They are able to perfectly tell the story with its simple plot and complicated sight gags. Every joke lands and the timing is beautiful.

Kim Lyle is Velma, the hapless lead. Velma finds herself having to pass as a man and later becomes the trainer for an equally hapless boxer played by Jeff Swearingen. She can roll her eyes better then just about any other actor I've seen. Her face paints a myriad of expressions, and one wonders if her face muscles ever get tired. Jeff Swearingen can do pratfalls on a par with Chaplin or Buster Keaton. To say he throws his whole body into his acting is an understatement. Brilliant on his own, when he pairs up with Ms. Lyle, it is comic nirvana.

Joel McDonald, Ben Bryant, Steve Jones, Kineta Massey, Jennifer Youle, Tara Christensen, and Laurie Williamson round out the cast. Each gets their own moment to shine and they do it well. The Fairy sequence choreographed by Nancy Schaeffer was as light as a whipped cream, and as funny as a pie in the face. Ms. Schaeffer and the "dancers" certainly captured the feel of the era. This said, every now and then there is a modern day wink and a nod acknowledging the absurdity of it all. This balance of genuine performance and tongue in cheek is most difficult to pull off; all involved succeed.

Adding to the zany mix of talent are the two gifted musicians B. Wolf and Johnny Sequenzia. This duo plays the musical score and the sound effects. Part of the pleasure is listening to irreverent musical moments that emphasize the comedy on stage. I wish not to spoil it so I won't give the exact details, but there is a musical moment that pays homage to "My Fair Lady" that made me bust out loud laughing. It was a bit of a more obscure reference for I was the only one in the audience that seemed to have caught it, but that is what makes this show so delightful: it appeals to those who are theatre buffs, and those who are less "in the know."

The costumes by Aaron Turner, the lighting by Joyous Israel, and the scenic design by Ms. Lyle, were wonderfully executed. They also hit the right balance between period authenticity and cheesy. The silent era film clips and film done by Karl Schaeffer added an additional fun dimension to the show. The blooper at the end of the performance caused the biggest laugh of the night and was the perfect way to end the evening.

This entire production is so well conceived that if pressed I couldn't find a flaw. Well yes, there is one: I wanted a souvenir, and there were none to be had. Seldom do I see a show that would make me want to buy a souvenir to remember the show by. I'd have gladly forked out fifteen or twenty bucks for a t shirt or a mug. Even the show's artwork by Mark Oristano is great!

So please, catch this show. You will be deliriously glad you did!