Sucker Punch at Studio Theatre

Sucker Punch

Studio Theatre
1501 14th St. NW Washington

In Sucker Punch, Two black teenagers step into the boxing ring and must face who they are—champions or sell outs? Kinetic, comedic, and emotionally bruising, Williams's masterwork blasts open the experience of being young, black, and ambitious in 1980s London.

Thru - Apr 15, 2012

Show Type: Comedy/Drama

Running Time: 1 hour 40 mins with no intermission

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Sucker Punch Reviews

Average Rating based on 7 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Washington Post - Recommended

"... Yet in director Leah C. Gardiner’s propulsive and athletic handling, the depictions of the matches themselves —choreographed by Rick Sordelet and lighted by Brian MacDevitt — supply the piece with its required wallop. You can overlook the script’s hewing to the genre’s conventions and luxuriate in the production’s blunt-force theatricality."

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- Peter Marks

Talkin Broadway - Recommended

"... Director Leah C. Gardiner keeps the tension high and the action moving —the play runs just 100 minutes without intermission—but fight choreographer Rick Sordelet is responsible for the jarring, visceral boxing matches."

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- Susan Berlin

Washington City Paper - Recommended

"... Familiar enough stuff, in other words, if engagingly framed in swaggering, testosterone-soaked exchanges and dialect thick enough to smear on toast. It’s the physicality of the performances —the anger in Brown’s restless, coiled body language, the lithe joy in Best’s exuberantly fluid fights—that’ll leave you feeling wrung out by the end of an intermissionless 100 minutes. Fight choreographer Rick Sordelet, director Leah. C. Gardiner, and the creative team that creates so convincingly grubby a frame have more than earned the attention."

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- Trey Graham

Washingtonian - Highly Recommended

"... There’s something uniquely satisfying in the sound of a good, solid punch. Its various causes and dramatic reverberations have inspired writers and directors for decades, but when it comes right down to it, the swiftest hit to our emotions comes in the form of that powerful “thwack.” Luckily for theatergoers, this truth isn’t lost on sound designer Lindsay Jones and director Leah C. Gardiner, who deliver some masterfully crafted auditory and emotional jabs in Roy Williams’s Sucker Punch, currently playing at Studio Theatre. And it’s not just through amplifying the boxing tale’s many blows that this show’s sound flexes its muscle: A whirring jump rope, the roar of an adoring crowd, and the wailing sirens of a city in turmoil all convey the same intense reality the rest of the production works to create."

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- Gwendolyn Purdom

The Georgetowner - Recommended

"... Director Leah C. Gardner keeps the hour-and-a-half production moving at a speed that allows you to overlook the fact that this isn’t particularly cutting-edge stuff but high dudgeon drama and, given its 30-year-old historical setting, drama with immediacy."

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- Gary Tischler

Curtain Up - Highly Recommended

"... Sucker Punch is a knockout. This hard-hitting play by Roy Williams, a highly-regarded English writer and son of Jamaican immigrants, is now getting its US premiere at Washington’s Studio Theatre. Rough, tough and throwing plenty of hard jabs, Sucker Punch tells it like it is for Britain’s young blacks. This is London as it really is, or was in 1980, the time of the play’s setting. It is an antidote to the highly popular but no longer realistic refinement of tv’s Downton Abbey."

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- Susan Davidson

DCTheatreScene - Recommended

It would take an ambitious, forward-thinking theatre to capture British playwright Roy Williams’ unique blend of kitchen-sink drama and urban patois. Fortunately for all of us, the play found its way to Studio Theatre, whose sharp, well-realized production of Sucker Punch is another impressive production in an already-strong season.

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- Scott Meslow

Sucker Punch at Studio Theatre

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch Reviews

Washington Post - Recommended

Talkin Broadway - Recommended

Washington City Paper - Recommended

Washingtonian - Highly Recommended

The Georgetowner - Recommended

Curtain Up - Highly Recommended

DCTheatreScene - Recommended

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