THE BRUTES: REVIEWS
“It’s an irresistibly dramatic scenario: siblings who split between the Union and Confederate sides in a violently divided country, enacting a tragedy about political conspiracy as a real-life plot bursts into flames around them.”
“As a work investigating Shakespearean performance history, The Brutes wants to achieve some of the same goals as Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet, also about a famous 19th-century actor taking on the Dane. I found Wimpee’s juxtaposition of Shakespeare and history more deliberate and inspired than Rebeck’s, the friction of Julius Caesar’s simultaneous anti-tyrant and anti-revolutionary stances rubbing up explosively against John’s burgeoning plot.”
“At 75 minutes, The Brutes is a whirlwind, action-packed firecracker, but at its heart, it’s the complicated relationship between siblings perched on the edge of an impending tragedy but not yet in it that really makes this play a joy to watch.”