David Cassidy in the News
New York Newsday
September 24, 1993
BY ALL RIGHTS, Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers" shouldn't work. A contemporary prince-and-pauper musical tragedy set in Liverpool, it's overlong by a fourth, boasts two songs worth a damn, no dancing, grown actors playing children, shuddery portents of doom, rhyming verse monologues and enough shmaltz to keep the Carnegie Deli in chopped liver well into the next century. It also wipes me away, without fail, every time.
Judging from the damp Kleenex count in the audience by the curtain call, I'm in good company. Regrettably, new audiences cannot revel in departed British cast members Stephanie Lawrence, Mark Michael Hutchinson and Con O'Neill, whose vivid performances camouflaged a multitude of blemishes. There are a number of consolations in the revised cast, not the least of whom is Petula Clark, who makes her Broadway debut in thrilling vocal form as a working-class mother who gives away one of her twin baby sons to a wealthy housewife out of economic necessity. Clark's dramatic range has always been somewhat limited, but she throws herself body and soul into the part with ultimately affecting results.
The gimmick of casting real-life brothers Shaun and David Cassidy as the. brothers Johnstone garners mixed rewards. If Shaun is no great shakes as a youngster, he grows in credibility as the privileged brother ages. David, by contrast. is a gutsy revelation as the poor but plucky Mickey, navigating the path from exuberant youth to depressed adulthood with a depth of feeling we never knew he had in him. The price of David Cassidy's hard-earned maturity is that it makes us feel oh-so old. Whenever Petula Clark sings with that precious Surry lilt, however, we're younger than springtime.
