David Cassidy in the News
Shows Must Go On -- Until Summer
February 25, 1995
By Steven Winn
San Francisco Chronicle
BLOOD BROTHERS'
"Blood Brothers,'' the melodramatic Willy Russell musical about the British class system at the Golden Gate Theatre `Forever Tango' may continue past its scheduled April close (through March 12), has its ardent believers. It might have more if the actors playing the show's twin brothers -- David Cassidy and Tif Luckenbill -- looked more alike.
The show hangs its case on illustrating what happens when one brother (Cassidy) is raised in poverty and the other (Luckenbill) enjoys the privileges of the upper class. Because of the physical dissimilarities of the actors, you've got to buy the two as fraternal rather than identical twins, which implicitly weakens the dramatic argument of the piece.
If Cassidy's Mickey and Luckenbill's Eddie really seemed a plausible genetic match -- alike as two pins, as the show's narrator insists -- then the telling imprint of nurture would be that much stronger.
``Blood Brothers'' has enough trouble selling the story it sells so hard. It could use the sort of casting magic that helped the show on Broadway.
