Stan Hochman: Stepin back in time, a play about Muhammad Ali's early days

REMATCH IN A dinky hockey rink in Lewiston, Maine. Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston in the first round. Knocks him out with a short, swift punch that is so short, so swift, so lethal that the cynics looked at the slo-mo replay over and over and over, the way they scanned the Zapruder film frame-by-frame. And even then they weren't sure of what they hadn't seen.

Ali told them the knockout right hand was an "anchor punch" and that he'd learned it from old-time movie comic Stepin Fetchit, who had learned it from the legendary heavyweight, Jack Johnson.

And out of that pebble of boxing history, Will Power has built a fascinating play called "Fetch Clay, Make Man" that is being performed at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton through Feb. 14.

Ben Vereen is remarkable as Fetchit, who made millions in those early Hollywood flicks playing a shiftless, shuffling, subservient black man. Evan Parke replicates the early Ali brilliantly, the preening "I am the greatest" narcissism, the energetic shadow-boxing, the loud-mouthed bragging, "If you want to lose your money, bet on Sonny."

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Sonequa Martin as the brassy Sonji, Ali's first, defiant wife.

Power has an essay in the Playbill that says, "Every generation has the responsibility and right to learn and question the story that's told to them. This is my attempt at doing just that."

It's not that that ground hasn't been thoroughly plowed. Books, movies, documentaries, there's a cottage industry, poking around for hidden clues that reveal the essence of Ali.

The play is set in 1965, that's 45 years ago. Time and harsh winds have blurred the writing on tombstones. It would help if the Playbill contained a time frame. Liston quit in his corner in the first fight and Ali, a 7-to-1 underdog, scrambled up the ring ropes to screech to the media that he was the greatest and that he had shocked the world.

The next day he told the media he had joined the Nation of Islam and that his name would be Cassius X (soon changed to Muhammad Ali). The writers were hostile, the questions negative, how could he soil the heavyweight championship of the world by embracing a militant cult that preached hatred for white, blue-eyed devils?

"I don't have to be what you want me to be," he grumbled, and I still think that was the most significant, original, emotional thing he ever said. That's the underlying theme of the play, even though Ali does not speak the line.

Sonji brazenly wears short skirts and heavy makeup. Fetchit defends his comic skills and the bitter disputes with Hollywood producers that got him black-balled. Ali frets about the murder of Malcolm X, wondering if he could have done something to prevent that. All of them, wearing disguises, chafing at the yoke of being someone they're not.

What you get is Power's version of the strange alliance of Fetchit, who was famous for that brutal shiftless stereotype, and Ali, who lectured about black pride, standing tall, telling youngsters "what you believe, you can achieve."

At one point Fetchit tells Ali, "I snuck in the back door so you could walk in the front." Maybe he said that, maybe he didn't. Jackie Robinson kicked in that back door, head high, pelted by prejudice. That's who made it possible for Ali to strut in the front door.

The play has Ali inviting a down-and-out Fetchit to join his entourage, not out of sympathy, but out of fear, hoping that somehow the old comic will teach him Johnson's devastating punch, something new to use against a vengeful Liston. It's true that Ali idolized Johnson, for his skills, for his swagger, for spitting in the eye of bigots, the spittle darting from between his gold-capped teeth.

Twice, Ali says, "Liston has trained hard for this fight." Wrong! Liston did train hard at first. And then the fight was postponed because Ali needed hernia surgery, possibly brought on by lugging the prefight hype around single-handedly. The fight was moved from Boston to Lewiston, and Liston showed up sullen and soft.

"Ali had no fear," says Gene Kilroy, who was the champ's business manager for almost a decade. "He truly believed that Allah would not let him lose."

Kilroy, who could, but won't, write the definitive book on Ali, is never mentioned in the play. Angelo Dundee and Dr. Ferdie Pachecho are referred to briefly, first names only, when Ali is scolded by a stern bodyguard character named Brother Rasheed for having white men in his corner.

The play stays focused on Ali and Fetchit, and that's OK because Parke and Vereen are dazzling, despite a plot that is as fragile as a two-legged stool. "They never interfered with Ali, never told him what to do," says Kilroy, who was part of a lively entourage that included a Chicago cop they nicknamed "Hoover" because he vacuumed Ali's trunks and socks off the floor with a swift whoosh, to be sold on the open market.

There's a sparse set, brightened and extended by slides and films projected onto the rear wall. At the end, there's this huge Neil Leifer color photo of Ali standing over the prone Liston, brandishing his right fist, screaming angrily.

That would have made a dramatic curtain line, Ali shouting, "Get up, sucker . . . nobody is gonna believe this!"

"Never happened," Kilroy said sadly. "What he yelled was, 'Get up, you coward, so I can beat the crap out of you.' "

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