Miriam Trujillo
Having already caught one of Stolen Table Collective’s productions, I knew to expect something weird. I was not wrong.
BOT Brothers: A STORY OF OUR TIMES, a surreal, mechanical take on Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers was every bit as bonkers as it should be.
I knew that I was in for a treat from the beginning, when the performers announced they had recieved a cease and dessist letter from Russell himself for their parady of his work. Their performance of BOT Brothers was now an act of defiance. Well after that, BOT Brothers had to deliver.
It did. Narrating a script that inexplicably rhymed and executing a sound design, conjuring up a wintry night in Liverpool, Foley Artist Sam Dodgshon set the stage for for for the two person play.
The two performers, Harris Morris and Joe Smith played everyone in the show, going through all the usual tricks: costume changes; wig changes; voice shifts, to tell us the sad story of two blood brothers. Separated by birth, the two grow up side by side anyway, adopted by mothers from different social classes. Their lives are shaped by their social status but they still share a bond…until their situation spins out of control and they end up killing each other. Blood Brothers is a sad story with a lot to say about social class, Thatcherism, and human nature in general.
Except this isn’t Blood Brothers. This is BOT Brothers. The boys are robots, created and abandoned by a mad scientist. There’s no depths whatsoever, and it’s all very silly.
Harris and Smith leaned into the silliness superbly, turning characters into caricatures, hamming up the robot bits, and attacking the emotional bits with glee. BOT Brothers was a bit chaotic, but Harris and Smith managed to tell a coherent story, punctuated with larger-than-life moments to make it a good parody.
Morris and Smith are experts at audience interaction. They drew everyone in, informally explaining the plot at the start of each act before getting into character and getting on with it. People seemed invested; especially when the robot boys learned the the joys and pleasures of sticking their-ahem-“fork” into a toaster. Unless I miss my guess, the image of a whipped cream smattered “robot” forking a toaster is probably the only thing anyone from the audience is going to remember from this show.
But that memorable image aside, there was plenty else to laugh at during this fun bit of budget- yet clever- theatre. Morris and Smith seamlessly wove between improv and script. They used repetition to their advantage, peppering the show with callbacks to previous jokes. Their take on the various characters was delightful (my personal favourite was Smith playing the working class mum who couldn’t give a fuck. Now that I’ll remember for a long time). They maintained good timing and momentum throughout, (rarely) letting the show drag. Through it all, they managed to put some real heart into this sad story about innocent affection. It made me keen to see the source material, Blood Brothers. Maybe Willy Russell won the day after all…
Recommended Drink: A nice glass of machine oil.
BOT Brothers: A Story of Our Times has finished its run at the EdFringe. It next travels to Lambeth Fringe for performances on the 28th of September and the 10th of October at The Bread and Roses Theatre. Tickets are available here.
Jake Mace
