Ali has a lot on his mind: a young wife chomping at the bit, the Muslim Brotherhood keeping him on a short leash, the murder of his friend and mentor Malcolm X.
It’s May 1965, and Muhammad Ali is prepared to defend his heavyweight title in a rematch against the fearsome Sonny Liston. A year earlier, Ali had won the title from Liston in the first match, which Sonny had taken for granted and failed to train.
This time, though, word was that Sonny was training hard, dead set on knocking the young rhyme talker from Louisville for a loop, as most sportswriters at the time thought he surely would.
Ali has a lot on his mind: a young wife chomping at the bit, the Muslim Brotherhood keeping him on a short leash, the murder of his friend and mentor Malcolm X. Then there is Liston himself, as lethal a puncher as the boxing world had ever known.
Who to call? Why, Stepin Fetchit, of course!
So begins Fetch Clay, Make Man, playing through this weekend at Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre.
Why in the world look to Stepin Fetchit—reviled especially in the Black community as buffoon and Tom for playing up to white sensibilities? Everybody around Ali and everybody in the audience wants to know.
What devolves over the next two hours is two cultural icons—one from the 60s forward and one from an earlier age—working to shape their public personas and establish their legacies, delivering a powerful punch to the expectations others place on them.
Around them, three other characters—Brother Rashid, Ali’s wife Sonji, and Fetchit’s Hollywood boss William Fox—struggle as well to escape their destinies by reshaping their lives.
The power of the play is in the way people can remake themselves to avoid whatever box others—read dominant white culture—puts them in.
Written by Will Power and directed by Debbie Allen, Fetch Clay, Make Man stars Ray Fisher (Ali), Edwin Lee Gibson (Stepin Fetchit), Wilkie Ferguson III (Brother Rashid), Alexis Floyd (Sonji Clay), Bruce Nozick (William Fox), and Freddie L. Fleming (Ali understudy, on stage the night we attended).
See Ed Rampell’s thorough review of the play.
Fetch Clay, Make Man is being performed through July 16, 2023, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232. Tickets and info; (213)628-2772.
