REVIEW: Blood Brothers unmasks the reality of frat-house violence, Theater News

Deeply anxious, waiting outside the Delta Upsilon fraternity, I noticed a sign aiming to reassure passersby: “Everyone is okay! It’s a play! The people yelling inside are actors. They are safe!” 

Given where the evening ended up, it was probably a necessary precaution.

I wasn’t there for any sort of drunken frat party. Instead, I was milling about with a large cohort of aspiring rush ticket purchasers for Sheep’s Clothing Theatre and Outside the March’s sold-out Blood Brothers, created by writer Brianna Russell and director Catie Thorne as a part of the 2026 SummerWorks Performance Festival. It’s an immersive take on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary Canadian frat house. Over 80 minutes, the audience is free to wander the two-storey building, witnessing pieces of the drama in whatever manner they choose.

I was nervous that such an open-ended experience would be incomprehensible, but what struck me was how easily I fell into it. As a spectator, I was handed a mask designed by Evangeline Dailisan, who also did the show’s costumes. This use of masks is akin to Punchdrunk’s seminal Macbeth adaptation Sleep No More, where the audience is required to wear a full face mask, marking them as separate from the performance. Throughout the night, it was uncanny for the audience to be wearing something that obscures everything but body language.

Entering the space, I was auditorily assaulted by a loud rock song that I couldn’t place. The pre-show music then jumped between aggressive (Slayyyter’s “Crank”) and introspective (Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”).

As I got acclimatized to the house, the plot began moving. It’s pledge initiation night at the fictional fraternity led by president Julian (Jonah Paroyan), the charismatic yet malevolent son of an unnamed Canadian prime minister. Among the initiates are Julian’s keener brother Octavius (Owen Carter), his timid cousin Cinna (Seung Eun Cha 차승은) — as well as Decius (Nolan Byrne), who’s there for connections to pitch his business, and Metellus (Brady Bertrand), who seems to just want a good time. As in Shakespeare’s original, there’s a conspiracy: I was privy to Brutus (Boro Milošević) and Cassius (Nick Cikoja) discussing Julian sexually assaulting at least two women, in addition to the pair’s concerns about his dictatorial status in the frat.

I reached a rough policy of following loud noises like gongs and shouts because it felt like Thorne and the show’s sound designers, River Oliveira and Zoe Daca, used these sharp aural climaxes to provide a throughline amid the chaos. An interactive show is never fully free in that there are always guardrails, but Thorne’s direction makes them hard to notice. I felt delirious but never confused, as I was caught in the middle of multiple difficult scenes at once, bobbing in and out of conversations, slowly finding it possible to piece the story together. 

As the night went on, my sense of disorientation turned to shocked comprehension. In a hazing scene, the pledges, standing on the four corners of a pool table, recite trivia about the frat’s history, with Julian instructing them to strip for every incorrect answer. It’s a tensely blocked sequence, providing opportunities for the actors to shine; Carter’s confident delivery contrasts Cha’s Cinna, who possesses a deer-in-the-headlights incredulity. Mima Higashi’s fight choreography takes the foreground as the violence drifts from psychological to physical. It’s awkward and jerky, in a manner befitting drunken university students’ impromptu brawling. The raw and unflinching qualities peak in waterboarding so viscerally upsetting that I had to look away.

In the aftermath of these ruptures, Russell’s writing provides a cacophonic meditation on cycles of patriarchal violence; the older members of the frat, like Julian, embrace their status as tormentors, in part because they believe they suffered worse when they were pledges. The old guard reassures the initiates that once they pass, they are “brothers,” and therefore “the future for generations”: Canada’s new elite. 

Kalon Young’s Marc and Paroyan’s Julian, these self-appointed elites, possess a luciferian charisma. They’re charming, and occasionally funny, but mask an underlying cruelty that pretends to pragmatism. It’s clear why Julian is president, in spite of his monstrousness, because he’s the perfect avatar of privileged white Canadian masculinity. Conversely, I found Brutus’ girlfriend Portia (Auguste Kociuba), who ends up caught in the middle of the evening, exciting because of her function as the play’s conscience. An aspiring journalist, she stands up to the culture of silence, butting heads with Marc thanks to her impassioned faith in the possibility of truth. 

After witnessing Blood Brothers’ ambiguous conclusion, I walked out of the house with a sense of dread. The piece’s commitment to showcasing the gutturality of contemporary masculinity is challenging in the best way. As I slunk away after the front-lawn curtain call, mask staring at me from my bag, I kept thinking about how exciting it was to see a show take the risk of immersing us among such culpable characters. Blood Brothers is a long look at an evil we all too often deny, demonstrating how toxic institutions necessitate our becoming at once victims and perpetrators of violence. I found the experience exhilarating precisely due to its ugliness. It makes sense why onlookers need to be reassured that it’s a play, because the whole night felt straight from our world.

The 2026 SummerWorks Performance Festival ran from August 6 to 16. More information is available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Gwen Gabriella Caughell

Gwen Gabriella Caughell (she/her) is a transfeminine playwright and critic who lives in Toronto (formerly London, Ontario). Her favorite plays are the ones that are loud and difficult. She is fascinated by the intersection of aesthetics, queerness, and politics, and is currently working on her first full-length play “Dreamhouse/Dollhouse” with the support of the Paprika Festival.

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