‘Rocky’ to music, on Broadway

Don’t you recognize it? That’s the song Philadelphians sing when we ritualistically spring up the steps of the Art Museum, turn, look out over Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and raise our arms high in a defiant gesture of challenge.

All right, most of us lack Sylvester Stallone’s muscles. That also goes for Andy Karl, the actor now playing The Italian Stallion in the Broadway show Rocky. But Karl exudes charisma, compassion, and courage, and so does this rousing new musical, adapted from the 1976 cult film, about the iconic Philadelphia fighter, Rocky Balboa.

Rocky offers a vintage underdog story. A South Philly nobody, a club fighter who works as a leg-breaker for a local loan shark, gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to challenge the world heavyweight champ, Apollo Creed (a formidable Terence Archie). It’s the classic underdog’s pursuit of the American Dream.

The word is ‘big’

The subplot of Rocky’s rise to the challenge features his romance with the shy, retiring Adrian (an endearing Margo Seibert), who works in a Fishtown pet store. Her brother Paulie, Rocky’s friend (a feisty Danny Mastrogiorgio) at first encourages the relationship but then opposes it, providing some additional conflict to the prosaic plotline. There’s also Mickey, the over-the-hill trainer (a crusty Dakin Matthews), who begrudgingly takes Rocky on and prepares him.

Everything about the musical Rocky is big — the orchestra, the cast, the scaffolding, the giant chunks of scenery that fly in and out, the huge slabs of meat in the packing plant where Rocky trains by punching those grotesque carcasses.

Yes, there are a few quiet moments. The love scenes between Rocky and Adrian are low-key and tender, providing a welcome break from the big pre-fight buildup.

Onstage arena

But nothing will prepare you for the coup de théâtre that occurs during the last 20 minutes of this two-and-a-half-hour spectacle. Ushers swoop into the orchestra and ask audience members in the first five rows to vacate their places and mount the stairs to the stage, where stadium seating awaits them. Suddenly, an enormous boxing ring flies down, sweeps across the stage and into the audience over the vacated rows. The entire theater has become a boxing arena, and we are the spectators! Swarms of trainers and bucket-men wearing Rocky and Apollo jackets surround the ring. Stage managers with headsets urge us to stand up and cheer — and we do, as Rocky and Apollo fight their 15 rounds right before our very eyes. Blood spurts, sweat sprays, noses break, lids split, and we cheer them on. You ain’t seen nothin’ like it on Broadway.

All this spectacle is the work of Alex Timbers, a wunderkind with a dynamic sense of theater space and its endless possibilities. (He staged Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Peter and the Starcatcher on Broadway, as well as the hit disco poperetta Here Lies Love at the Public Theater.) With Rocky he reinforces his reputation as one of theater’s most exciting young artists today.

By the way, I noted in the program that the production employs dialect coaches, presumably to train cast members in “Philadelphia dialect.”

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