BWW Reviews: Half-baked BLOOD BROTHERS Adaptation Needs More Time in the Womb

The announcement that David Kramer would be adapting Willy Russell's BLOOD BROTHERS was an exciting one. A show not seen on South African stages, despite its long run in London's West End from 1988 - 2012, the narrative seemed as though it might suit the 1960s Capetonian setting where Kramer aimed to shift the action, with the socio-economic rift between the so-called Cape Coloured people mirroring the British class system that underpins Russell's tale of twin brothers separated at birth and raised in different circumstances. Months later, the show is on stage at Theatre on the Bay, and the reality of what Kramer has achieved in his adaptation belies the potential that this version of BLOOD BROTHERS held in its conception. While there are some moments that work beautifully, there are many where the shaky ideological foundation upon which this production is built calls the entire exercise into question.

The plot of BLOOD BROTHERS is a fairly straightforward one. Mrs Johnstone is a woman (from Liverpool in the original; here she lives in District 6) who finds herself with seven children and pregnant once again by a husband who has left her for another woman. When she discovers to her dismay that she is carrying twins, she confides in Mrs Lyons, the woman for whom she works as a housemaid, who happens to have had no success in conceiving a child of her own. The two strike a deal that when the children are born, Mrs Lyons will take one of the twins and raise him as her own son. Mickey and Eddie, fraternal twins despite being described in the book of the show as being 'as like each other as two new pins', are raised on opposite sides of the class divide. When they are seven years old, they meet each other and establish a lifelong friendship, which they consecrate in the act of becoming blood brothers upon the discovery that they share the same birthday. Their mothers try to keep them apart, but even when both families move, fate brings them together again. As teenagers, both boys fall in love with a girl called Linda, who ends up marrying Mickey after he impregnates her. This ignites the series of events that leads to the death of both brothers, an incident the audience is told at the top of the show by the Narrator and which is central to the meaning of the story of the Johnstone twins.

Russell's original BLOOD BROTHERS started off as a school play, created with Merseyside Young People's Theatre, in 1982. The fully developed version that made its bow in the West End a year later did not completely shake its origins, which are still reflected in elements like the ballad stanzas used by the narrator to tell the story, in the simplified epic structure of the piece and in the generalised socio-political commentary the piece makes. Russell's craft as a musical theatre writer is uneven. There is some great music ("Marilyn Monroe", "My Child", "Easy Terms", "Tell Me It's Not True"), but the score is also characterised by the generic 1980s pop idiom that infiltrated many British musicals of the period, without being as distinctively melodic as the scores of Andrew Lloyd Webber or as inventively diverse as the music composed for CHESS by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. The lyrics are evocative, but unpolished: many half rhymes and an undisciplined metrical relationship between the words and music jar on the ear and disrupt the dramatic build of the musical. And although there are some compelling scenes dealing with the relationships between the different characters, put across in the kind of rich dialogue that is seen in Russell's best works, EDUCATING RITA and SHIRLEY VALENTINE, BLOOD BROTHERS flounders when it comes to fleshing out its themes. When, close to the end of the play, the audience is asked to decide for themselves whether it is superstition or class that led to the brothers' downfall, the thought comes across as trite.

When we stand on the shoulders of giants, our achievements are augmented. But science has also shown us that flaws can similarly become inculcated as iterations develop, say, in the development of a genetic code. The flaws prevalent in the original BLOOD BROTHERS are reproduced in Kramer's adaptation. There are the same slips in craftsmanship when it comes to the lyrics, but to remedy these might have been difficult. Of greater concern, however, is how the socio-economic generalisations play out on an even grander scale in the South African version of BLOOD BROTHERS. For instance, while it appears there was a huge sense of community in Liverpool as there was in District 6, the specifics of the clearance of the slums in Liverpool resonate somewhat differently than the forced removals to which the citizens of District 6 were subjected. For one thing, the destruction of District 6 was motivated by the government's declaration of the borough as a whites-only area. In that context, celebrating the idea of displacing people from their homes to the Cape Flats as a "Bright New Day" - the song that closes the first act - is a complete contradiction of the ethos defining how District 6 should be remembered. Sugar coating the atrocities of apartheid in this way is irresponsible storytelling and reckless artistry. Using a story about a marginalised people for a middle class audience to wipe away guilt and reaffirm their own sense of righteousness by being able to voice tut-tuts of disapproval at the narrative circumstances of the characters rather than rigorously examining the issues that cause them, smacks of exploitation.

In translating his adaptation to the stage, Kramer has given a sense of movement to the piece that keeps BLOOD BROTHERS shifting smoothly from scene to scene. But when it comes to the work done with the actors, Kramer has let down his cast badly. Satisfied with a depth of performance that is best described as being "sincere", the cast almost uniformly struggles to physicalize the bodies of their characters, particularly when aging the quarter century that the musical requires them to do. As characters get older, the actors become less and less convincing. There is some irony in observing that the most believable acting takes place when the most unrealistic convention is in play: when the adult actors portray their characters as young children.

The strongest performance in the cast comes from Ephraim Gordon as Mickey, I suspect because he is the most physically adept actor in the company. Gordon imbues his performance throughout with physical proposals that seem impossible for the rest of the company to contrive. But even he cannot overcome the weak direction offered to the actors in this production. In the later scenes, after Mickey falls into a chronic depression and becomes reliant on medication, the direction offers no moderation of Gordon's work in regard to tempo-rhythm and relationships, making his physicality read as forced and overwrought.

As Eddie, Dean Balie comes across best when playing the younger version of his character, despite some problems with his articulation, which needs to be crisper and more muscular to counter the strident tone he employs to communicate his age at that point. Once his Eddie ages, the performance becomes more superficial, although his duet with Linda (a sympathetic Andréa Frankson) is one of the highlights of the second act.

As Mrs Johnson, the mother who serves as the protagonist of BLOOD BROTHER, Bianca le Grange steps into the shoes of Barbara Dickson, Kiki Dee, Petula Clark and Melanie Chisholm, who have played the role overseas in conventional productions of the show. Game for the challenge of transcending her pop music roots and meeting the requirements of a complex musical theatre role, Le Grange is very comfortable when delivering Mrs Johnstone's songs, really letting rip in "Tell Me It's Not True" where she marries emotion with song perfectly. She also has a fantastic connection with Gordon and Balie. Had the direction offered her greater support so that she could fully embody all aspects of the character, she could best almost any other musical theatre actress in the role.

The other major characters in the piece are simply not explored deeply enough. Buhle Ngaba does her best playing possibly the most complex character of the piece, but she is perhaps too young for the role in the final analysis. As the Narrator, Elton Landrew delivers a one-note performance. More comical than menacing - largely due to a series of reprises of a song involving "Die Tokoloshe", a misjudged adaptation point that provokes laughter rather than suspense - the character's purpose to engage the audience critically with the issues at play is rendered null and void.

The design of the show is almost completely unsuccessful. The set itself is one of the ugliest designs I have seen on stage this year. A monochromatic unit set, with a two house cut outs flanking either side of the stage, the intention is for the set pieces to function as a backdrop for projections (by Paul and Matthew Kalil), which are used to establish setting. Some of the projections work fantastically well, but on the whole they are overly literal and, at times, disproportionate. Kobus Rossouw's lighting creates atmosphere and helps to create the filmic rhythm for which Kramer aims. Penny Simpson's costumes are serviceable.

Kramer's adaptation of BLOOD BROTHERS falls far short of the promise it had as an idea. The production is an object lesson in the challenges of adapting international plays to a local setting. Unless the adaptation interrogates the original from the ground up, as Yael Farber's MIES JULIE did with August Strindberg's MISS JULIE last year, the problems can range from the awkward oddities to ideological disasters. While perhaps this adaptation of Russell's classic musical is stuck with those difficulties (and the lamentably unattractive set), there is time to refine the performances before the run at Montecasino later this year and transfer to the Fugard Theatre in 2014. With a piece that is as character driven as this is, perhaps that should be a priority for this production of BLOOD BROTHERS in spite of the show already having opened. It is a tangible challenge that can be undertaken and resolved.

BLOOD BROTHERS is currently running at Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town and will transfer to Johannesburg for a run at Montecasino, after which it will return to Cape Town for a run at the Fugard Theatre. Bookings for the entire tour can be done through Computicket.

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