‘Box’ @ Undermain Theatre
Photos by Paul Semrad
—Jan Farrington
The slave who mailed himself to freedom.
Henry “Box” Brown (1815-1897) may be a sidenote in the long history of American slavery—but once you hear what he did, it’s a fact you’re not likely to forget. In 1849, curled in a wooden shipping box 3x2x2, Brown spent 27 hours in a physical and emotional tight spot, transported by ship from Virginia to Philadelphia, where he was “delivered” to a waiting Abolitionist group.
Chicago-based playwright Jarrett King takes that fragment of story and runs with it in his play Box, running through March 23rd at Undermain Theatre and ably directed by Jiles R. King II. The play was commissioned by Austin’s Penfold Theatre (playwright King grew up and began his career in Austin), which premiered it in 2023. Undermain’s production marks the first Dallas run of the play.
Box is an interesting mix of imagined events and real history, dark issues and light-hearted magic. King’s characters are vividly drawn, his dialogue lively and often surprising—and Henry Brown (a charismatic and solemn Bryan Pitts) is a man worth knowing, courage and flaws alike. He endured 33 years of enslavement on a plantation. He broke and ran when his white “owner” sold away his wife and children, breaking a long-held promise.
We know some of what happened to Brown after his amazing journey: he became a lecturer and writer, and a stage magician who combined card, rope, and other “tricks” with commentary on the evils of slavery. But other elements of his life remain a mystery—and playwright King has filled the gaps with a quick-moving series of scenes re-inventing the start of Brown’s new life. Is he truly a free person? What does he owe to those who are not? And is he free to choose a different life—and not feel he’s betraying someone he loves?
In truth, Henry “Box” Brown never sees his wife Nancy (JuNene K) again. When the Fugitive Slave Act becomes law in 1850, he fears newly emboldened slave-catchers will come looking for him. He flees to England, where he becomes a popular figure on the lecture and entertainment circuits. He marries Jane (Catherine D. DuBord), an English schoolteacher. He lives to be an old man.
But in Box, which plays out in a series of sliding scenes that move back and forth in time, all these Henry’s futures are anything but sure and secure. They float, tangled with the past, all of them possible. And one or two, it occurs to us, might even be a dream or apparition he can’t have or hold.
Pitts, elegant and tall, plays a confident Brown in early scenes, a newlywed in London, his calm shaken by a trio of toughs (Steven Young, Tommy Stuart, and Lulu Ward) who threaten him on a dark riverbank, suggesting they might have been paid to send him back to Virginia. In a dreamlike scene we watch Brown and Nancy in an earlier time, then Brown alone, startled as Nancy suddenly appears to him in London. Invited to perform for a dotty English lord (Young again), Brown and Jane travel to the countryside—with his first wife insisting she’ll come too—but relegated to the servants quarters.
As Nancy, the forceful and compelling JuNene K makes a righteous case to both her husband and his new wife. (DuBord plays Jane as upright and loving—but with a side of fierce.) Just as interesting, though, are Nancy’s funny, honest side-chats with Pearl (the wondrous Rhonda Boutté), his lordship’s serving maid—who wants to know everything about America, slavery, and the Brown’s double marriage.
The cast is alive to every part of the story—the pain and fear, the confusion and love, the realities and the magic. The play isn’t afraid to make use of the surreal: at one moment, the competing wives fall into a stylized tug of war for possession of their man. And Brown’s magic tricks, brought off by Pitts with quiet flair (kudos to magic consultant John M. Wilson), are rather mesmerizing. Cards can tell fascinating stories, and appear where they’re least expected.
King’s language is fitted closely to each character, including Brown’s handyman (Stuart) and the lord’s twittery lady (Lulu Ward). The structure of the play doesn’t always lay smooth tracks for us from one place or time to another—leaving us playing catch-up at moments. But that is the way our minds work, jumping around in a pattern that only makes sense to us.
My mind is wondering what happened, in the end, to Henry and Jane’s marriage—and if by any chance that might have been the real, live Nancy Henry saw on the streets of London…or the ghost of a woman still searching for her time and her freedom.
Questions, perhaps, for a Box 2.0 one day.
WHEN: February 27-March 23, 2025
WHERE: 3200 Main Street (Deep Ellum), Dallas
WEB: undermain.org
