✭✭✭✭✩

by Sébastien Heins, directed by Karin Randoja

b current, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

October 16-25, 2014

“60 Minutes of Charisma”

I have a clear message for anyone who has not seen Brotherhood: The Hip Hopera – Drop everything and go see it now!  You don’t have to like hip-hop.  You don’t have to like opera.  All you have to like is a young, multi-talented performer named Sébastien Heins, who radiates megawatts of charisma.

Brotherhood does use hip-hop but it also uses music from Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson.  Heins fuses the music with theatre, mime and dance to such an extent that the show is above all physical theatre where the solo performer also happens to speak and sing.  During the show’s hour-long running time, Heins plays 15 different characters, including men, women and children and certain characters at different ages.  Heins’s ability at keeping all of them distinct, switching from one to the other with a simple turn or change of posture, is simply fantastic. 

With only one chair as a prop, Heins makes his own sound effects and uses mime so precise we almost feel we can see the invisible objects he manipulates on stage.  His performance is so physical that it is very difficult to say when mime ends and movement and dance begin.  Heins’s body is in almost constant motion

throughout the show and physically illustrates and magnifies whatever themes he covers.  In one particularly virtuoso section, Heins wordlessly depicts the rise of his two main characters from poverty to street-performing to signing their first contracts, all the while portraying both his main characters and multiple passers-by.

Heins’s play tells the story of two brothers, twins born just two minutes apart, who rise from nothing to the heights of stardom as hip-hop performers only to fall out and be separated forever by tragedy.  The brothers are Eliot and Julian, whose hip-hop aliases are CashMoney and MoneyPussy.  The plot is the familiar tale of the corrupting power of fame and fortune which causes Eliot to want to pursue a solo career and forget the bonds of brotherhood.  The separation happens but not as Eliot had hoped.  This causes him to reflect on the past and allows Heins to portray how the twins’ parents met, had children and how their relationship decayed to the point that the two boys fled their home.  In Heins’s physical portrayal of the twins, Julian is upright while Eliot is hunched over as if deformed by greed.  As Eliot begins to reclaim his dignity and a sense of what is most important in life, Heins gradually straightens Eliot’s posture and bearing. 

Besides the deft contrast between the twins as adults Heins also shows us how the twins interact as children and he creates several memorable characters such as Eliot’s sassy girlfriend Chrysanthemum or the angel of the twins’ mother who speaks with a soothing Jamaican accent. 

Heins’s performance style is so engaging that the two panels of Anahita Debonehie’s set where Jonathan Inksetter’s projections are shown are hardly necessary, especially since projections are used only sporadically.  The idea of having different local hip-hop artists perform as an opening act every night is also not a good idea since it creates a false impression of what the following show will be like.  Not only does Brotherhood tell a complex story, but Heins’s use of hip-hop always has a satirical edge to it.  After all, the first song is “Havin’ A Threesome With My Bro”. 

In tone, Heins accomplishes something very difficult in that he is able to send up the clichés of his story while still portraying moments of pain or joy with authentic emotion.  As a performer Heins could not have crafted a better showcase for his numerous talents.  It’s no wonder when Heins performed the show at United Solo Theatre Festival in New York in 2012 he was given the award for Best Emerging Artist.  Well, Heins has now emerged and his show runs only until October 25.  Don’t miss it.               

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Sébastien Heins; Sébastien Heins. ©2014 Dakota Arsenault.

For tickets, visit http://buddiesinbadtimes.com.