When dealing with a well-known historical incident -- in Nat Turner's case, an 1831 slave rebellion, leading to a massacre and eventual hanging -- a nonlinear presentation is a good way to go. We know how the story will end; what intrigues us is how this one man had the courage to take on an entrenched system of subjugation when he had to know that any such attempt was foredoomed. The Classical Theatre of Harlem's lean-and-mean production of Ty Jones' prismatic play, Emancipation, now at the historic Audubon Ballroom, brings Turner's riveting back story to visceral life.

The very fact that you have to pass a life-size statue of Malcolm X to enter the auditorium -- in which the former acti[...]