Blood Brothers, written by Brianna Russell and directed by Catie Thorne, is loosely inspired by the assassination of Julius Caesar but here a similar story of conspiracy, betrayal and death is set in the UoT’s Delta Upsilon Fraternity which is also the performance space for the play.

Julian Caesar (Jonah Paroyan) is the fraternity president, son of the prime minister and one imagines, at least in his own mind, destined to be Canada’s next prime minister but three.  Cassius (Nick Cikoja) and Brutus (Boro Milosević) are plotting to oust him on the grounds that he roofied two girls at a frat party. (Sounds like PM or even President material to me).

It’s pledge night in the frat house and various hapless pledges are being subjected to ridicule and mistreatment in their quest to join this elite group. One of them is the hapless Cinna Caesar (Seung Eun Cha) who is just a nice, shy kid who shouldn’t be anywhere near this group but has no choice since he’s a Caesar.  In the middle of Julian dunking an unfortunate pledge’s head in a fish tank someone (Cassius i think) bursts in and Julian ends up on the floor covered in blood, stone dead.  Marc (Kalon Young) takes charge and arranges for Cassius(?) to dump the body in Lake Ontario while he cooks up the “official” story with the brothers But there’s one last betrayal…

Now, why don’t I know more about what happened?  It’s all about the staging.  It’s staged in multiple rooms of the frat house simultaneously  and the focus of the action constantly shifts.  The audience is free to move around and position themselves wherever they feel the key action is.  This gets awkward when that’s obvious as there just isn’t enough room.  Also there are lots of narrow doorways and two staircases which large young men traverse at speed which makes the choice of where to be and when even trickier.  So when the death happened I was just outside the room (which i couldn’t get into) observing through a doorway when Cassius(?) came barreling down the stairs and through that doorway.  In the process of taking evasive action I missed the critical moment.  So it goes.

It’s an interesting, if somewhat frustrating, experiment.  There were several characters whose role was unclear to me because I wasn’t around anywhere/when that was made clear.  That included both women characters. Obviously Calpurnia (Heather Thomas) was Julian’s girlfriend but what role was she playing in the action?  And Portia (Auguste Kociuba) seemed to be some sort of student journalist but what was she doing in the frat house on pledge night?  What the play does very well is get over the invincible sense of privilege and untouchability that surrounds Delta Upsilon and the rather vicious struggle to be top dog that that inspires.  It’s actually quite chilling.

I think I prefer site specific shows where the audience is more directed, even if that means a different experience for different groups.  This all felt just a little too chaotic and unwrangled.

Blood Brothers is presented by Sheep’s Clothing Theatre, in association with Outside the March as part of 2026 SummerWorks.  It runs until August 16th.

Photo credit: Audrey Persaud