T.K.O.

By T.E.K.

T.K.O. KNOCKOUT by Louis La Russo II

Some plays are the comic books of the theater. All of their characters are caricatures. Their situations have the labeled banality of canned cliches. The dialogue is Cro-Magnon English. In scene after scene the ludicrous and the dreadful intersect at some flash point where the playgoer's ribs collapse in implausible laughter.

Knockout is just such a joker of a play. A movie in embryo and autopsy, it contains elements of every grade-Z fight picture ever made that was not worth its weight in popcorn. Give Playwright Louis La Russo II credit for knowing his Italo-American dropouts, fighters with four-letter mouths. He plants neon stickers on his key figures. The good guy (Danny Aiello) is Over-the-Hill. The bad guy (Edward O'Neill) is Below-the-Belt. There is an English Eliza Doolittle (Margaret Warncke) for whose favors they stage a slam-bang finale. Too bad someone forgot to throw in the towel.

--T.E.K.

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