STAGE REVIEW : ‘Joe Louis Blues’: It’s a Contender : Drama: Oliver Mayer’s play at LATC about the former heavyweight champ is provocative theater, but can use a little more punch.

The story of undefeated heavyweight champ Joe Louis is perceived as one of the great racial breakthroughs of the century. Playwright Oliver Mayer, however, has another perspective. He chooses to show us that in breakthroughs lie the same old racial attitudes: the same pain, same exploitation, same sad blues. And he makes his point with as much license as agility in his unfinished “Joe Louis Blues.”

Unfinished, because the play that opened in Theatre 4 of the Los Angeles Theatre Center Thursday still needs work--mostly in its overlong, overlabored second half. But it’s also where some of the most telling commentary lies. If there’s unnecessary fat on those bones, there’s also plenty of good lean meat. The work to be done is mostly excision. And cutting away is a lot sweeter than, say, construction or--worse--reconstruction.

In addition to the fundamental stageworthiness of the writing, this Artists Collective/TheatreLife/Olivari Entertainment production has muscle of its own. Director Abdul Salaam El Razzac knows how to keep a show up and running and has chosen a cast that can deliver the kind of footwork and punches demanded by the script.

We meet Joe Louis, played with unexpectedly tender and boyish appeal by look-alike Cress Williams, chiefly through people around him: Leila Rivers (Betty K. Bynum), a nightclub singer he falls in love with after his 1942 bout with Buddy Baer; trumpet player Demas Dean (Sherman Woods), also in love with Leila; older jazz musician Sidney Bechet (L. Kenneth Richardson), a “man of property” who acts as Dean’s mentor and protector while dreaming of moving to France because it’s “closer to Africa”--and their crass employer, Vantyle Mayfield (Kene Holliday), a hard-nosed cynic from Ste. Croix, who presses unwelcome advances on the far from defenseless Leila.

Leila is the fulcrum of the play, and the person above all who knows how to handle herself in any situation. She and Joe meet when he stumbles into Mayfield’s club, steals her away from Dean, sets her up as his mistress and helps launch her on an upscale career.

This nearly idyllic turn of events doesn’t last. Leila’s success and exaltation at the hands of a grotesque man named Barney (Seth Margolies, in a role that carries its own share of cultural bias) soon loses its charm. And Joe Louis, who donated millions to the war effort, finds himself in debt, drafted and barred from fighting for money while serving his country.

So do all dreams turn to dross?

Part fact, part fiction. Louis was indeed victimized by bad financial managers, but eventually recovered. Historical precision is not the point. This is a play about the demythification of an icon. Louis is Mayer’s icon of choice, the tool with which to look at white societal abuse behind black public success, which is the real purpose here.

There is a wide open question as to how much this kind of rough treatment breaks down along racial lines and how much the situation goes hand-in-hand with simply being a mega-celebrity. But who could argue that being nonwhite among whites doesn’t automatically magnify any problem?

Though it is sure to offend some, even the controversial anti-Semitic twist in the character of Barney could be seen as an anti-comment, showing how prejudice ultimately infects and cuts all ways.

However opinionated and volatile, the fact/fiction mix almost always makes for better theater than pure fact. Leila is as much a product of the same social forces as Louis. One refrains from calling her a victim because it is not in her nature to be victimized. But as the other black characters--Mayfield, Dean and Bechet--also find their dreams deferred or destroyed, mostly by outside forces, Mayer’s play points out one thing expertly: that there is uncontrollable evil in even the most unwitting bigotry.

Much of that is overstated in Mayer’s second act and much of it, for the moment, is muddled. It is largely thanks to the actors and director that the play is as lively as it is. They bring out the smartness of the dialogue and the great depth and dimension of his faceted characters, even the simplest ones.

But, paradoxically, Mayer’s passion stands in the way of his writing. By wanting to say a lot, he says too much. The technique is all there. What’s needed is a leaner line of attack. It takes a more direct punch for a deadlier knockout.

“Joe Louis Blues,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 19. $12; (213) 243-5434, (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes. Kene Holliday: Vantyle Mayfield Betty K. Bynum: Leila Rivers Christopher Lore: Announcer Sherman Woods: Demas Dean L. Kenneth Richardson: Sidney Bechet Cress Williams: Joe Louis Seth Margolies: Barney Cliff Berens: Isaac/Accountant

A presentation the Artists Collective/TheatreLife and Olivari Entertainment. Producers Theresa Larkin, Christopher Lore, Tiffany McLinn. Director Abdul Salaam El Razzac. Assistant director Bridgid Coulter. Playwright Oliver Mayer. Sets, lights, sound Smash Co. Costumes Lance Kenton. Hair Larry Tinsley. Stage manager Kim Harrington.