Blood Brothers

June 18th, 2007
Musical Theatre Guild at The Alex, Glendale
Concert reading of a Musical

It's the tragic and true story of a working class British mother forced to give away one of her twins, dividing their lives and sealing their dark destiny. The music is wonderful, tuneful, and the repeating refrains are some of the best examples of effective repetition in musical story-telling. The finale "Tell Me It's Not True" leaves an emotional lump in the throat and stays with you.

Musical Theatre Guild provided a solid cast with Cynthia Ferrer as Mrs. Johnstone, Chris Warren Glibert as Mickey, William Martinez as Eddie, and the equally Broadway-calibre voices of Johnny Hawkins, Reece Holland, Tracy Lore, Eydie Alyson and Joe Hart supporting. These dedicated champions of musical theatre put these concert performances together in about 24 hours. Considering the vocal energy and dramatic, tragic nature of the story, to throw this together that quickly and come off with such a powerful performance is nothing short of evidence of first rate performers, on or off Broadway.

I especially enjoyed the voices of Warren Gilbert, Johnny Hawkins, William Martinez and Cynthia Ferrer.

We'll be returning to see more productions from MTG.