Over its past 14 seasons, Penfold Theatre has been on a mission to give audiences “fresh eyes to see old stories.” Just last year, the company staged the world premiere of local playwright Jarrett King’s reimagining of War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio broadcast about an invasion from Mars.
“Reimagining” is writer’s code for making stuff up – a historical speculation of sorts when dealing with real people and real events – and here the quite white Welles and his troupe were depicted as Black artists. The payoff of this merging of fact with fiction is a unique and entertaining opportunity to challenge the past with a more contemporary perspective. The risk is audience members confusing the two.
That risk is high in Box, King and Penfold’s reimagining of the life and times of Henry “Box” Brown. This is due, in part, to Brown being one of history’s most unknown folk heroes. But there is some murky writing and questionable staging in the play’s world premiere production as well, under Simone Alexander’s direction.
“Reimagining” is writer’s code for making stuff
up. … The payoff of this merging of fact with fiction is a unique and entertaining opportunity to challenge the past with a more contemporary perspective. The risk is audience members confusing the two.
The history books suggest that Nancy was never heard from again. But our playwright reinserted her into Henry’s timeline at the point of his new life and new wife in England. It’s a wonderful fabrication, for it allows King to explore a side of Henry’s mind not revealed in his stoic autobiography. It also examines the held belief that women were second-class citizens, and slaves were three-fifths of a person, from Nancy’s perspective.
The moment of Nancy’s arrival is underdeveloped in the script, but the likelihood of her being a figment of Henry’s imagination and desire rather than real is reinforced by the lack of changes in costuming (beautifully rendered by Pam Friday) and scenery (an attractive music hall motif, created by Desi Roybal) throughout the show, despite the passage of time and frequent relocation of place. And yet, all this is contradicted by having Nancy become a dominant rather than phantom presence in this play, which quickly shifts Box’s focus from Henry’s heroics to hers. This is confusing, though it does result in some terrific discussions about the definition of freedom between Nancy and Pearl (Chelsea Manasseri), a Black housemaid, and between Nancy and Jane.
The performers in Penfold’s production act the hell out of the script, giving their characters dimension and vivacity while managing to make the oddly heightened language and excessive use of soliloquy (perhaps another indicator of the fantastical nature of Nancy’s visitation, perhaps not) sound natural. Nathan Jerkins as Lord Bloomfield, at whose house Henry performs, is particularly excellent in this and the other small comedic roles he performs. While an absolute pleasure to watch, he tends to upstage the others onstage, including Brown, which once again undermines the title character’s prominence in this play.
The efforts of all the actors are undermined by direction that frequently keeps them too far from the audience. On opening night, they were also in shadow much of the time due to the poor execution of Jacqueline Sindelar’s lighting design.
In the early 1990s, Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner also took a stab at reimagining Henry “Box” Brown’s journey, but the project – set to premiere as a co-production between New York’s Public Theater and London’s Royal National Theatre – was put on hold. “It was an honorable attempt,” Kushner said in an interview with The New York Times, “that I wasn’t pleased with.” </p
There is something to be said about holding off on a world premiere of a work that is still in need of conceptual and technical refinement.
Penfold Theatre’s Box
Ground Floor Theatre, 979 Springdale, 512/850-4849penfoldtheatre.org
Through July 8
Time: 1 hr., 50 mins.
This article appears in The Books Issue and June 23 • 2023.