Blackbox review: Hinds play uses magic to stage Henry Box Brown's
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- Henry "Box" Brown escaped slavery near Richmond, Virginia, in 1849 by posting himself in a wooden crate to Philadelphia, a state where the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 had phased out ownership of human beings.
- Rickerby Hinds wrote and staged "Blackbox," using stage-magic language — a glamorous magician's assistant (played by Jada Evelyn Ramsey), a knotted rope trick, and a chains-through-the-neck illusion — to frame the escape as a Houdini-style stunt.
- Josiah Alpher stars as Brown, narrating a painful journey of being squashed, upturned, and knocked about during his crate shipment before his "happy delivery" in Philadelphia.
- Hinds's script itemizes Brown's callous treatment by his owner and accounts of conditions worse than his own, and extends the imagery of bondage beyond physical chains to churches that sanctioned slavery and the psychological burden of constant whipping threats.
- The Guardian review faults the production on three counts: the story is recounted rather than dramatized, the actors deliver at breakneck speed without tonal variation, and the narrative ends where a conventional telling would begin — with Brown's entry into a new life.
Why it matters: By reframing a 19th-century escape through stage-magic conventions, "Blackbox" takes a dramaturgical risk that lands unevenly: the visual ingenuity earns the production its theatrical distinction, but the reviewer argues the storytelling stays expository and ends at the wrong beat, leaving the emotional arc incomplete.
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