Overview:
Undermain Theatre's production of Jarret King's play Box is a captivating and emotional tale of Henry Box Brown, a black abolitionist and magician, torn between his love for his past life in slavery and his new life as a married man in England. The play explores the complexities of Henry's life, including his relationship with his first wife Nancy and his wife Jane, and the struggles he faces as a black man in a white society. The production features an all-star cast and lavish sets and costumes, and runs through March 23 in Dallas.
Review by Martha Heimberg
Compelling production of Box is a tale of a black abolitionist turned magician torn by love and fear
A truly all-star cast inhabits the columned basement space at Undermain Theatre in Box, a sumptuous, sleight-of-hand production of Jarret King’s play based on the remarkable life of Henry Box Brown, a slave who shipped himself to freedom in a box and later became a famed abolitionist and magician.
And what a trip it is. Jiles R. King II (no relation to the playwright) directs the tight ensemble from front to back and side to side to dramatize the constant tension of opposing forces in Henry’s life, from the harrowing, but richly sensual plantation life he left behind in his youth, to the new, safer life he has made for himself up north, and later in England.
The historical Henry Box Brown (Bryan Pitts) was born into slavery in 1816. At age 33, he had himself shipped up north, surviving on biscuits and water for 27 hours in a wooden crate. He became a successful lecturer and magician and later moved to England, where he married a well-born white woman named Jane (Catherine D. DuBord), in one of the first mixed marriages recorded in the country.
Jarret King — an Austin-born, Chicago based playwright — reimagines here that Henry’s first wife Nancy (JuNene K), who he never saw again in real life, somehow finds him in England and demands that she has first-wife rights on her man. For Henry, Nancy embodies the joys and sensuality of his vigorous youth in a black community he loved, despite the cruelty of bondage. Jane, on the other hand, opens doors to the security and opportunities of white society — the same folks who colonized Africa and sold its people into slavery.
Pitts’ Henry performs thrilling magic tricks and is ever the gent — even when thrust before a drunken, bullying English aristocrat. He truly loves Nancy and his black heritage, but he also truly loves Jane and the life they have together that enables him to speak out for black people. He is torn between two worlds and two beautiful women pulling him in half. Solomon’s story of two mothers fighting over a baby comes to mind, but these are wives fighting over a husband. He’s only one man? What can he do? He better come up with some big time magic.
Director King II keeps this taut triangle at the center of the ideas tossed about in drawing rooms and on street corners — from the evils of too much power, to women’s rights and the servitude of workers. Along the way, we meet other characters, black and white, who confirm the evils of a society controlled by the exploitative few.
DuBord is an exquisite Jane, only reluctantly using her advantages as a white woman, but touchingly vulnerable in her deep awareness that being female negates much of that power. Marrying Henry lifted her heart, and she delivers with loving sincerity a poetic speech on how she loves him all the more for what he’s suffered. JuNene K is a fiercely determined Nancy, first appearing as a kind of fleeting memory to Henry, but then taking on longer speeches and scenes as she demands that he choose her. In a bizarre scene that’s not quite a catfight, the two women lay down their lawful marriage claims to each other — and also commiserate about being born female.
The fascination of the play is often in the minor characters and their interactions. Magnetic, hilarious Steven Young brings the house down as a ludicrous plantation master or a playfully vicious Lord Bloomfield, offering gin and knighthood to the black magician —and then blasting his guest with invectives for not sharing his magic.
Lulu Ward is comically risible as an angry, giggly lady of the manor. Rhonda Boutte is a tough, sassy black maid, and Tommy Stuart is a conniving white journalist bent on blackmail.
The lavish production features at least a dozen gorgeous periods gown and opulent beaded outfits for upper crust dudes, all designed by Ava Roberts-Kamaria. Set designer Phillip Schroeder and lighting designer Steve Wood open wide the stage for huge magic boxes to appear in front of rolling panoramas of oceans or smoke or scary storybook illustrations. Devin Bruton designed the sound, and magic consultant John M. Wilson earned every penny of his wage. Now you see it.
Box runs through March 23 at 3200 Main Street in Dallas. Tickets are $12.50-$38.50. Go to undermain.org