Maybe you remember Henry as the steel-driving man who heroically outpaced a steam drill. Maybe you remember that he was a free man, former slave, or convict; that he dug through a mountain or laid down track; that he had a pretty wife who stayed true and wore blue, or that she wore blue, but wasn't true. Each version of the ballad differs slightly, but in all, a couple of facts remain the same: Henry was African American, and he died immediately after winning that race, thus proving a man indeed wasn't nothin' but a man, and industrialization was here to stay.

Braak uses the dark ending of the John Henry story to craft an equally bleak tale of his own. Borrowing from prison folklore, he goes behind the music and imagines the sort of desperation that might push a man, even this mountain of a man, to his breaking point. There's a machine after John Henry, all right, but it's institutional, and fueled by cultural and economic forces.

Kash Goins plays this chain-gang Henry as a deeply conflicted gentle giant, and it's startling to watch panic reflected so frequently in his eyes; he might be a big, strong guy, but faced with the constant threat of sadistic prison guards, he still ain't nothin' but a man. The play is at its best when Henry and his incarcerated compatriots - strongest among them Maurice Tucker's slow-witted, earnest Willie and Chuck Beishl's granite-hard Irishman Peter - build tenuous alliances despite the brutality and powerlessness of their circumstances. These scenes are directed sensitively by John Doyle and Randall Wise, who also designed the set - spare metal scaffolding upon which the actors climb, perch, and occasionally hammer.

But Braak's script does some hammering, too, with a surfeit of gratuitous violence (after a while, all those fake beatings begin to lose their punch), and a character named Laz (Richard Bradford Stevens) who, yes, rises from the dead - albeit in John Henry's dream - to deliver a message about the afterlife. Why use Laz at all, when there's Robert (Jerry Rudasill), a mystical guitar player modeled on Robert Johnson, sent from the devil to write Henry's song? Robert is a compelling twist, but never convincingly integrated into Henry's story; shouldn't he have a presence in all the play's supernatural elements?

Despite its weaknesses, The Life of John Henry succeeds in digging away some of the sandy soil burying Henry and men like him beside the tracks they laid before the turn of the last century. Iron Age's rendition isn't one children will recite in school - it's not even really appropriate for children - but it's probably a lot closer to the truth behind John Henry's legend.

The Life of John Henry

Presented by Iron Age Theatre at Centre Theater, 208 DeKalb St., Norristown, through Nov. 29. Tickets: $15-$22. Information: 610-279-1013 or www.IronAgeTheatre.com.