Blackbox brings legendary slavery escape to stage through magic tricks
A stage production called Blackbox, showing at the Edinburgh festival, uses magic tricks to tell the true story of Henry 'Box' Brown's 1849 escape from slavery. The reviewer praises the powerful subject matter but points to several weaknesses in execution.
A production of Rickerby Hinds's play Blackbox, staged by the playwright himself at the Edinburgh festival, tells the true story of Henry "Box" Brown, who escaped slavery near Richmond, Virginia, in 1849 by mailing himself in a wooden crate to Philadelphia, where slavery had already been phased out.
The staging borrows the language of stage magic — from a glamorous magician's assistant to a knotted rope trick — to highlight how extraordinary this escape truly was. Actor Josiah Alpher plays Brown, whose cramped, jolting journey inside the crate is portrayed as physically painful, with the character squashed and turned upside down along the way.
The play illustrates that the bonds of slavery were not only physical chains: they also included a church that sanctioned the practice and the constant psychological weight of the threat of whipping. The script traces Brown's life before his escape in detail, covering the harsh treatment by his owner as well as accounts of conditions endured by other enslaved people that were even worse than his own.
Critical reception
Despite the weighty subject, the review identifies several shortcomings. The story is largely recounted rather than dramatised, and without the magic tricks the production would feel theatrically flat. The cast performs at a breakneck pace but without much tonal variation, making the narrative hard to follow. The production also ends at the point where the story might be expected to begin — with Brown's arrival into his new life of freedom.
