The Royale NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (153)
See it if You like LCT works! You want to have something to think about. It is based on a true story & the character makes it muck
Don't see it if You hate boxing &it’s brutality
See it if you'd like a play that exposes the raw racial discriminations faced by black men & women in 1905. Excellent acting, great sets, poignant.
Don't see it if you dislike great drama that viscerally cuts to the crux of the matter at hand. This play does that. LCT recently aired a tape online. Great
See it if you want to see a show that while set in 1905, feels just as relevant today. Very clever staging enhances the telling of this powerful story
Don't see it if you don't want to see a show about the Jim Crow south at the turn of the 20th century. Read more
See it if It is a beautiful transformative piece of theater art; holds a life lesson for all of us and touches a painful part of our American history
Don't see it if Don’t see it if boxing and the use and abuse of people is too upsetting for you.
See it if Nice
Don't see it if The show was good something different from the rest of show's
See it if you love straight plays dealing with sports or with race relations in America, love compelling staging and wonderful magnetic performances.
Don't see it if you hate straight plays, have an aversion to plays dealing with Boxing or race relations, or to plays where men a shirtless at points. Read more
See it if Great writing and direction.
Don't see it if you won't, it closed.
See it if You want to see a tense, beautifully choreographed drama about racism.
Don't see it if You prefer your plays light and fluffy.
Critic Reviews (29)
"Marco Ramirez’s absorbing drama…Staged with a swift, stark lyricism by the impossibly versatile Rachel Chavkin, 'The Royale' boldly takes on and reorients a familiar genre and a familiar tale…The entire cast of this production embody their parts with laser sharpness…Occasionally the script tips into overstatement and overexplanation…But you don’t feel like picking apart the individual elements when they cohere into such an organic whole."
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"Not a single flesh-on-flesh punch lands in Marco Ramirez’s intensely focused boxing drama, yet it’s like you see the blood and teeth flying and hear the crunch of broken ribs. In 'The Royale', the endless sucker punch of a historically racist society is the chief means of violence. Words are another, and they come fast and furious in a percussive script…The big showdown is handled in a fairly ingenious and surprising manner. It connects and it bruises."
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"Much of the dialogue among the four men has the rhythm of jazz; the words and actions punctuated by syncopated clapping and stomping…Rachel Chavkin, an inventive and keen director, knows her immersive theater and she also, on the evidence, honors writers. So do the design team...'The Royale' has heart and a conscience, and it’s unquestionably the work of a writer still finding his voice. Like his champion Jay, he’s got style."
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"Newcomer Khris Davis brings muscle and fine acting chops as Jay. Montego Glover adds steely passion as his concerned sister…Rachel Chavkin replaces typical jabs and hooks with claps and stomps and makes you look at fight scenes with fresh eyes. She also imagines the championship fight in an ingenious way that involves Jay’s family. The terrific performances and the striking, stylized staging deliver one-two punches."
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"Sometimes the most powerful fights are the ones we have in our own minds — a fact vividly depicted in 'The Royale,' a riveting play by Marco Ramirez…A spare and intimate story of internal struggles, propelled by the dynamic, imaginative direction of Rachel Chavkin and performed by a terrific quintet of actors…It’s a struggle made all the more dramatic by a coup de theatre that has the boxer realizing this battle is as personal as it gets."
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"Featuring elaborately stylized staging that fails to compensate for the thin writing, 'The Royale' doesn't fulfill the promise of its powerful subject…The evening only sporadically comes to dramatic life…To make up for the skimpiness of the material, the dialogue is frequently accompanied by rhythmic hand-clapping, a repetitive device that quickly becomes annoying...The actors' strong efforts aren't enough to make the play feel anything other than pedestrian."
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"Chavkin's rendering realizes every bit of tragic theater that the primal sport embodies…Scene after scene of Ramirez's thick dialogue can sit heavily on the brain. When it's roused by Chavkin's clear aesthetic point of view, the narrative comes to life…Just as Ramirez builds his own version of the great Jack Johnson's history, Chavkin interprets the power struggle that occurs when two boxers enter the ring. Each takes liberties with reality, but both artists' renderings couldn't be more truthful."
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"Marco Ramirez's inventively-crafted 'The Royale,' given a tense, rhythmic and evocative mounting by Rachel Chavkin, merits high scores of its own…Davis' attention moves seamlessly as his character goes back and forth from sparring with Fish to sparring with the press...The championship match is represented with unexpected dramatics, as Jay must eventually learn the price of his victories, and of the victories of his people."
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