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Opined October 10th, 2005
Miracle Brothers - Book, Music & Lyrics by Kirsten Childs. Directed by Tina Landau
Choreography by Mark Dendy
With, Kerry Butler, Cheryl Freeman, Jay Goede, Anika Larsen, Nicole Leach, Tyler Maynard
Darrell Moultrie, Clifton Oliver, Karen Olivo, Devin Richards, Gregory Treco, William Youmans
Daryl Waters, Music Director, Fred Carl, Scenic Design, G.W. Mercier Costume Design Anita Yavich, Lighting Design, Scott Zielinski, Sound
Design Brett Jarvis
Vineyard Theatre Presents, 108 East 15th Street through October 15th
I’m going to go slow on this one.
First of all – this is a musical with songs that are a bit Walt Disney and a bit Peter Pan – (Adolph Green and Jerome Robbins – 1955).
Pink Dolphins in Brazil decide to play a game one night. They can transform into any sort of bring they want. Rabbits. Parrots. Even humans. This night
they pick humans. They go through the portal and pop out as humans in 18th century Brazil. Two of them are ‘brothers” – one is a slave and the other is
the only son of the slave owner.
Oops.
Now we don’t know when the incarnation happened exactly. Did these people incarnate fully formed or were they babies when they arrived? Who can
tell. Anyway, the black brother is named Green Eyes, and he is not so happy, what with being a slave and all. The white brother, Fernando, thinks things
are not really so bad because this, after all is Paradiso – which happens to be the song he sings to convince his slave brother to stick around on the
plantation. This is one of 9 very long songs in the first act alone.
Fine.
Things get a little tricky when Fernando kills his weasliy dad and it’s blamed on Green Eyes. This means EVERYONE runs away, leaving two very sad
mothers who sing a lot to assuage their grief.
O.K. then.
ACT TWO: Well this act feels like it belongs to a different story altogether. Off in the swamps, the Peter Pan theme kicks in here as Greene Eyes meets a
white woman disguised as a pirate; Fernando meets a black woman on her way to Palmares – an escape slave republic. Ooo! Interracial dating! The moms
get in on the act by going after their boys, and when everyone convenes in a cave, the mothers are reunited with their boys and, coincidentally, bump into
each of their long lost loves who were presumed dead. All the while they sing and dance their way through ten more songs.
The end. The portal opens, the people end their game, go back to being dolphins and live happily ever after in the river. Everyone leaves except the two
brothers who decide to stick it out here in Paridiso. They close with a deafening duet that leaves Green Eyes downstage singing his heart out. Some of us
are sitting so close we can see he has no cavities. And he has brown eyes.
About that essay I’m writing. The one that says – you gotta love actors because they will put up with just about anything to get onto a stage. These people
not only put up, but had to dance and sing sing sing as well. These are saints or fools. Take your pick.