Blackbox @ Underbelly Cowgate

Blackbox follows the life of Henry ‘Box’ Brown, an enslaved man born into a plantation in Virginia, and his daring escape to freedom in 1849 involving the Postal Service and a wooden crate. Brown would later move to the UK where he toured as both magician and anti-slavery advocate – one hundred and seventy years later, Blackbox revisits the two in tandem.

Josiah Alpher and Jada Evelyn Ramsey join forces to bring Blackbox to life binding spoken word, gospel music, illusion and the rhythms of hip-hop as they glide through the contours of Brown’s life. Built from Henry Brown’s memoir, writer and director Rickerby Hinds – a professor of playwrighting at the University of California, Riverside where the play premiered in 2023 – bills his creation as “a play disguised as a magic show.”

Hinds’ scene transitions could use some refinement, and the show itself a tighter edit, as audience concentration drifts around the twenty-minute mark with some covert watch-checks and shuffling. Blackbox contains the seeds of a great idea which unfortunately have not been fully realised. For a show claiming to be disguised as a magic show, it fails to lean fully into the bit; glimmers and sleight of hand are peppered into the storytelling, but not in a way where their absence would be catastrophic.

Blackbox is carried by the acting of Ramsey and Alpher, and Ramsey’s strong vocal cords are a huge propellant in the pacing of the show. Alpher is defiant and eloquent in his delivery, examining a man questioning freedom and faith at a time when both are tested.

On America’s 250th anniversary, Hinds urges his country to consider its not-so-distant past. He invites his audience to lean in and watch closely at Brown’s legacy and ask the question – what is resistance?

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Blackbox, Underbelly, Cowgate (Belly Button), until 30 Aug (not 17), 12.40pm, £14-15