Blood Brothers

Not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting to like this one. To a certain extent I still don't, but not in the way I was expecting.

To be fair, the show was written for a country that is not the United States. It's England/Great Britain, depending on your preference. The play follows the story of two twin brothers separated at birth who become friends - in separate households and classes - and eventually die at one another's hands. Don't freak out; I didn't really spoil anything. That much is revealed in the first five minutes of the show, and besides, it's theatre people: the thing is practically designed to be ruined. Off topic, moving on.

So the real message of the show is partially lost to an American audience because America does not have the same rigid class system that the UK suffers from. Apart from that, the music is pretty good and the set and lights are pretty bitchin'. Ten points to Victoria Miller, Lighting Designer, and David Dwyer, Set Designer.

My biggest issue with the show, is that half of the set changes are ridiculously fast and require a fairly large amount of finesse and we don't have the man-power nor the skill level to really execute them perfectly yet. They're not horrid; if they were my review would be much worse. Anyway, suffice it to say that the show is not perfect and probably never will be with the short run it has.

The performances were pretty good too. Apart from the sometimes poorly executed accents. Seriously people, don't do accents without a speech coach or unless you KNOW the accent. Several really cool lines were lost in translation due to shoddy accents. Despite the accents, i was still impressed by the vocal skill of the actor playing Mrs. Johnston. Those were some very low notes for a woman to sing and she hit them with clarity, good tone, and decent volume. Bear in mind, this is all just an opinion. I'm no voice teacher, director, or artist of any sort really.

The actors playing the Johnston Twins were also pretty good, and their stage dynamic wasn't what I'd call fantastic, but it was good enough that it worked. The final number of the show should bring forth a lump to the throat, if not tears to the eyes.

It's good, just not awesome and life-changing. So it's kind of like a fig newton: tasty enough to snack on, but not addictingly delicious.