Shadow Boxing

There are no corners for Jonny Collis-Scurll to hide in as pumps and presses and pummels his way through James Gaddas' flawed script about a boxer who slips on the eve of his big fight. It is an impressive performance, physically, as he speaks his lines – changes mode even – while performing a lung-bursting set of press-ups. Then leaps to his feat and continues smoothly, without needing an extra breath.

Such prowess would be nothing if he couldn't deliver his lines with rhythm and inflexion. Donald Pulford has not so much directed as choreographed the piece, as Collis-Scurll deftly builds boxer Flynn's story, his own father a failed boxer who he watched being humiliated in the ring. So that, of all the various boxing-orientated productions at the fringe, this is the one which gets closest to the pugilist himself.

Where Pulford lets Collis-Scurll down is in the play's own killer punch of a dramatic revelation. Collis-Scurll delivers it well, but to appreciate its full impact, it needs to be landed with such a vast change of pace that the play would appear to be in slow motion.

From then on, the script loses much of its previous tight precision and while Collis-Scurll keeps the energy high, the drama of the piece dissipates. But there is no denying that he is a real contender.