Heroic myths are founded upon fables of the few triumphing over the many, if only in defeat. John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859—his goal being the securing of weapons to assist in slave uprisings—was mounted with a force of only 40 men, previous supporters having rejected his violent tactics. On the night before their attack, their visionary commander consoled his troops with the gospel story of David and Goliath.
Holy wars aren't just waged in foreign countries, you see, nor are they always condemned in ours. The United States's own armed conflict of 1861-65 was fueled as much by ideology as by policy: Commercial farmers in the South believed that the unpaid labor upon which its economy relied for survival was ordained by God (it wasn't), while Christian abolitionists in the North believed that such servitude contradicted the Bible's teachings (and it did). Border skirmishes engendered by these differing opinions could be dismissed as simple brawling, but a rebel gang taking on the U.S. government was civil disobedience gone too far. Idris Goodwin's docudrama, The Raid, opens with a character assuring us that "Everybody in this play is dead," lest the occasional sound of modern law-enforcement vehicles or jargon threaten our safe remove from the events under scrutiny. As in all good historical fiction, the narrative duties fall mainly to a pair of commoners—Brown's recording secretary, Henry Kagi, and a freed slave called "The Emperor"—who bear witness to the steps leading up to the crucial battle, re-enacted with carefully researched accuracy, after acquainting us with the evolution of the fiery abolitionist unafraid of dying in service of his cause. With dramatic action relying so heavily on conversation conducted under watch-and-wait conditions (alleviated by a single moment of "a-ha" gunplay from fight designer David Woolley), structural similarities to Shakespeare's Henry V are not entirely groundless.
For this Jackalope Theater Company world-premiere production, Kaiser Zaki Ahmed directs a nine-member ensemble adept at imposing colloquial rhythms upon dialogue that could quickly grow stilted and textbookish. Warren Feagins and Toya Turner contribute intimate portraits of historic icons Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, while Jared Belliott's Emperor and Daniel Desmarais's Henry guide us through Goodwin's chronological intricacies with articulate ease. What more than justifies the march to the Jackalope studio in the Broadway armory, though, is Ron Wells's impressive portrayal of the obsessed and intrepid John Brown, whose martyrdom continues to stir controversy today even as it is commemorated in our national galleries.
