The Royale Reviews
Washington Post- Recommended
"...Beautifully orchestrated by Hernandez, the nonliteral staging touches work all the better because they complement richly realized performances. Wright's ebullient and cocksure Jay, who grabs our interest and sympathy from the start, also reveals emotional depths. Genebach's Max is a diverting wheeler-dealer, and Lolita Marie's cool intensity, as Jay's perspicacious sister, Nina, proves essential to the play's message and mood. In a capable performance that belies his recent addition to the cast (after another actor had to withdraw), Frisby does justice to the play's most haunting speech, when Wynton remembers being exploited to fight blindfolded in moneymaking slugfests that left the ring littered with bloody coins and teeth."
DC Theater Arts- Highly Recommended
"...Under the direction of Paige Hernandez, the rest of the ensemble matches Wright's excellence. The play's title comes from "battle royales," in which groups of Black men were blindfolded and set to beat each other bloody while the audience cheered, bet on their favorites, and allowed the last man standing to scramble for coins they had scattered on the ground (a powerful metaphor in itself). As Jay's manager, Wynton, Jay Frisby has one of the finest moments of the evening in a monologue that describes that humiliating spectacle."
Talkin Broadway- Recommended
"...Much of the 90-minute play consists of stylized boxing bouts, staged by Hernandez and Williams (supported by Kenny Neal's sound design) without actual physical contact. One boxer throws a punch, the other reels back, but they're fighting side by side instead of facing each other. More than an arresting stage effect, it brings the audience into the heads of the combatants. Sarah Tundermann's lighting design, including period fixtures, and Kelly Colburn's projections add perspective."
DCTheatreScene- Highly Recommended
"...If baseball represents the joy of sport - its season concluding with popped champagne corks and ticker tape parades for the winners and the promise of next year for the losers - then boxing represents its tragedy, the loser lying broken and bleeding on the canvas, the winner often in not much better shape, and knowing that the day he, too, tastes defeat is coming. The metaphor extends itself to the application of America's greatest shame, racism, to the sport."