Champion production of powerful drama

Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story
By Jacob Sampson
A Ship’s Company (Parrsboro, NS) production in association with Eastern Front Theatre (Halifax) at the NAC Azrieli Studio
Directed by Ron Jenkins

Sam Langford was named to the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1955, one year before he died. The ESPN cable television network ranked him as one of the top ten boxers of all time.

Yet, over a lengthy boxing career, during which he won 180 of 256 fights and became heavyweight champion of England, Australia, Canada and Mexico, he never had the chance to fight for the title he most wanted: that of American World Heavyweight Champion. (This was, in part, because Jack Johnson, the first African-American world heavyweight champion, did not want to risk losing the title to Langford and, in part, because white boxers in the Jim Crow era in the U.S. did not want to risk losing to black fighters.) 

So, in retrospect, Langford, nicknamed the Boston Tar Baby, has been called “the greatest athlete never known” and “the fighter nobody knew.”

In Chasing Champions, playwright Jacob Sampson, who also portrays Langford, tells the story of his life in an exceptionally well-structured play. In addition to giving a carefully selected portrait of the fighter’s professional and personal life, it creates a rounded picture of the man and, even for non-boxing enthusiasts, a riveting piece of theatre.

With skilled director Ron Jenkins at the helm and first-class atmospheric video projections from designer Corwin Ferguson, the three other performers, Marty Burt, Micha Cromwell and Zach Faye, all effective in their multiple roles, swirl around Sampson.

He moves between being the dying Langford, old, blind and penniless in Harlem, and his younger self, escaping from an abusive father in his native Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia, to carve out a career as a boxing champ despite the American prejudice against black fighters. Punctuated by a few apparently effortless pushups, smooth punches and shadow boxing, Sampson delivers an entirely believable characterization of a driven man, eventually forced to give up his lifelong fight when he loses his sight.

Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story continues at the NAC to November 24.

Director: Ron Jenkins

Set: Garrett G. Barker

Lighting: Leigh Ann Vardy

Sound: Joe Micallef

Video and projection design: Corwin Ferguson

Costumes: Cathleen McCormack

Cast:

Marty Burt

Micha Cromwell

Zach Faye

Jacob Sampson