A PLAY THAT
GOES THE DISTANCE

Writers Theatre delivers a knockout production
of Marco Ramirez’s boxing drama, where the
greatest battles take place outside the ring

La’Tevin Alexander, Ajax Dontavius

The second show in Writers Theatre’s current season is Marco Ramirez’s The Royale. Loosely based on the life of Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight champion, The Royale is about as unconventional a bioplay as you will encounter, in the best possible way.

The play opens on Lauren M. Nichols’ minimalist but striking set. There’s little more to it than a boxing ring minus the ropes. A worn brick back wall lets us know that we’re in a decrepit gymnasium, and a solitary punching bag hangs from the ceiling. Jay, a handsome young boxer, is prepping for a fight with a challenger who goes by the name Fish, a naive teenager plucked out of poverty by the promise of more money from a single fight than he would earn in two weeks at his job. Jay, whose talent is exceeded only by his cockiness, toys with the younger man in the ring, baiting and taunting him even while he works the audience, until a couple of well-placed punches from the boy send him reeling. Recovering his focus, Jay crushes his opponent, but Fish’s skills and tenacity have made an impression. After the fight, Jay and his trainer Wynton approach Fish and offer him a job as Jay’s sparring partner. With the help of his manager Max, Jay is making a bigger play for attention. He wants to fight Bernard Bixby, the recently retired world heavyweight champion. But this is America in 1905. Jim Crow is in full effect. Champ Bixby is white. Jay “The Sport” Jackson is Black. Jay is not legally allowed to even share a restaurant room with Champ Bixby.

This is unprecedented territory. And dangerous.

Ajax Dontavius

From its opening frame, The Royale signifies its willingness to change the game; rather than utilizing traditional fight sequences, the bouts are depicted through Rasell Holt’s carefully choreographed movement and percussion, the latter of which is provided by the boxers stomping in time. This is incorporated with Stephanie Farina’s sound design and Jason Lynch’s lighting design—the light shifts on the actors’ faces and bodies each time a punch lands. The maestro conducting this symphony of sound, light, movement, and performance is director Tyrone Phillips, and it’s altogether marvelous, achieving its peak in a bravura set piece: a press conference where Jay stands stage front and center at a microphone, doing battle with the press corps, all of whom are played by Scott Aiello, who flits about the audience like a whirling dervish. Meanwhile, Fish spars with the punching bag in the background while Wynton instructs him. All of this plays out at once, perfectly in time with the sound and light, and achieves the rhythm of a boxing match as the press lunges and throws punches while Jay feints and plays defense.

It is possibly the most exhilarating thing I’ve seen on stage all year.

Ajax Dontavius, La’Tevin Alexander, James Vincent Meredith

But Ramirez has more than cleverness and inventive stage play on his mind. In the course of the press conference, Jay is asked about his hometown, and his evasive answer stands out. At the moment, I was somewhat befuddled by the line. But it’s a reflection on my lack of imagination. I am a person living in America in 2026, not a Black man in Jim Crow’s America in 1905, and it took me more than a few minutes to register why Jay would not want to speak of his hometown. What makes The Royale so memorable is that it moves beyond bioplay tropes to make the story about more than just the charismatic man at its center. Expanding its scope beyond the ring, Ramirez casts his eye on the cost of Jay’s potential achievement—not only to the people immediately around him, but also to the strangers who support him. Late in the play, we have a surprise visitor. Her name is Nina. She is Jay’s sister, and she has come to ask him to do something so outrageously unfair that I sensed the hackles rising in the seats around me. Nina is played by AnJi White in a performance that is the secret weapon of the play. This is the only production of The Royale that I’ve seen, but I expect that the success of any production would depend on the skills of the actor playing Nina.

AnJi White, La’Tevin Alexander

How fortunate, then, for Writers Theatre that they have AnJi White. She tells you volumes about her character simply in the way she takes off her hat and lays it down on her carpetbag. Nina wants Jay to throw the fight; her argument with him is the third of the four boxing matches of the evening—I will not spoil the structure of the fourth—and both White and Alexander are absolutely incredible together.

James Vincent Meredith, La’Tevin Alexander

I may have heaped praise on White, but the cast is flawless across the board. James Vincent Meredith brings a wise and weary air to Wynton, breaking my heart with just a look in response to an accusation of disloyalty. Ajax Dontavius manages to be both pugnacious and disarmingly endearing as the trainer—his scene where he gives Alexander a gift is the sweetest in the play. As Max, Scott Aiello, one of the invaluable chameleons of Chicago theatre, gets a part that’s worthy of his talent and makes the most of it. And La’Tevin Alexander carries the show on his muscular frame. It’s not an easy role: Jay has to be arrogant and likable; narcissistic and generous; oblivious and aware; Machiavellian and ingenuous, and Alexander absolutely threads the needle here. He is wildly charismatic and charming one moment and vulnerable and desolate the next. It’s a star-making performance if there ever was one.

La’Tevin Alexander, James Vincent Meredith, Scott Aiello

The Royale is a remarkable accomplishment. It throws up questions with no answers. Jay is so focused on the historical value of what he is going to accomplish that the effects of his victory don’t even occur to him. Ramirez asks us to choose. He contrasts the “greater good” with individual suffering. And in a brilliant move, he removes the white heavyweight champion, Bixby, from the equation. The audience is implicated. We are complicit. We want Jay “The Sport” Jackson to win. We know he’s going to win. And he does. And then, in the final few seconds of the play, Ramirez shatters us, holding the frame just long enough for it to register before the stage goes dark.

La’Tevin Alexander, Scott Aiello

It would be easy to call The Royale a knockout, but that does a disservice to the play. A knockout is a blunt, quick ending to a boxing bout, usually resulting from brute force. The Royale puts in the work. It schemes. It observes patterns and adjusts to them, shifting its strategy to meet its opponent. The Royale isn’t a mere knockout: it’s a boxing match that goes the distance and wins on points.

La’Tevin Alexander, Scott Aiello, Ajax Dontavius,

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photos by Hugo Hentoff

The Royale
Writers Theatre
Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Theatre, 325 Tudor Court in Glencoe
90 minutes, no intermission
Wed at 2 & 7:30; Thu & Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 2 & 7
ends on November 29, 2026
for tickets ($35+), call 847-242-6000 or visit Writers Theatre

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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