Boy In A Box – Guilded Balloon Patter House
There is something wonderfully unsettling about Paul Coates’ Boy in a Box. This is a single hander that treads a remarkably fine line between humour and some very dark places indeed, including suicide, while somehow finding room for what becomes a fascinating, if increasingly unhinged, lecture on American history.
And the box is not theoretical. It is right there.
Every now and again, a thump comes from inside it. Whatever, or whoever, is in there wants out: the disenfranchised, the silenced, the forgotten majority? We are told one thing with certainty, whatever is in the box is definitely not white.
So, what is it? Black? Brown? Asian? Honduran? All of them? And, more importantly, who is willing to open the box and find out?
Coates veers between appearing like a madma...