★★★★★ 
Before the narrative settles, before the politics sharpen, before the audience fully understands what it’s being asked to witness, Stefano Pietro Detassis is already skipping, already boxing, already pushing his lungs to the edge while delivering lines with absolute clarity. Anyone who has ever sparred — even lightly — knows how quickly breath becomes unruly, how speech collapses under exertion. Detassis keeps control. It’s not a trick; it’s a statement. The body is part of the story, and he tells it without compromise.
Plot Summary
The piece (written by Maura Pettorruso and translated by Stefano Pradel) follows two immigrant boxers in France on the eve of the Second World War. Eugenio, an Italian socialist worker fleeing Fascism, and Victor, a Tunisian Jewish man fleeing poverty, arrive in Paris hoping to carve out better futures. A boxing match is scheduled — the moment their paths are meant to cross — but war postpones it indefinitely. As Europe fractures, their personal ambitions are overtaken by the political violence around them. Eugenio becomes a worker‑boxer fighting for exploited labourers; Victor becomes a symbol of resistance against Nazi‑fascism. Their private hopes also represent a collective struggle for dignity, identity and survival.
The Performance
Stefano Pietro Detassis
Detassis carries the entire production, and he does so with a physical intensity that never feels ornamental. The skipping, the footwork, the bursts of movement — they’re not flourishes. They’re the pulse of the show. He speaks through exertion, and the exertion becomes part of the meaning. Breath is political here: who gets to breathe freely, who doesn’t, who has to fight for the right to exist.
The set is deliberately sparse: a chair, a clothes stand, and a reflex punch bag — the freestanding kind mounted on a flexible pole, the type that swings back at you when struck. That minimalism forces the focus onto the performer. No visual distractions, no scenic cushioning. Music is used sparingly but effectively, shaping mood without dictating it.
Whether the absence of visual projections is a creative choice or a limitation is open to debate. On one hand, the starkness suits the piece: two men stripped of nation, home, safety, reduced to their bodies and their will. On the other, a shifting visual backdrop — archival imagery, abstract projections, even simple colour washes — could have deepened the sense of historical pressure. There’s an argument both ways. For me, the minimalism worked, but I could see how a more dynamic visual language might have expanded the emotional palette.
Themes and Resonance
At its core, Boxeur is about choices — the ones forced upon you, the ones you make anyway, and the ones you refuse to surrender. Boxing becomes a metaphor for life, not in the clichéd sense of “fighting spirit,” but in the way the show frames endurance, breath, stance, and refusal. You keep your guard up. You take hits. You decide when to strike. You decide when not to bow your head.
There’s a moment where Detassis describes the local fascists: petty, middle‑class, petit bourgeois bullies who “had always been bastards like that,” looking down on others while hiding behind ideology. It’s delivered with a sharp comic edge, and the follow‑up — knocking one of their teeth out so they can no longer pronounce Duce properly — is a brilliant piece of antifascist humour. It lands because it’s rooted in character, not caricature.
The comedy throughout is well‑judged. It doesn’t soften the politics; it sharpens them. Laughter becomes another form of resistance, another way of refusing to be cowed.
Conclusion
Boxeur is a disciplined, urgent, and deeply human piece of theatre. Detassis’ ability to merge physical exertion with narrative clarity is genuinely impressive, and the production’s political spine is unmistakable without ever becoming didactic. The minimal staging keeps the focus where it belongs: on the performer, on the story, on the breath.
Pequod Compagnia have brought a work to Dundee Fringe that understands the past not as a distant archive but as a living pressure. It asks what you believe, yes — but more importantly, it asks what you will refuse to give in to.
A powerful, lean, and resonant hour of theatre.
By Patrick Harrington
Performances on 17th and 18th of September 2026 available at the Little Theatre. Find out more about the Dundee Fringe 11-20 September
