Review: Brothers Reunite After a Loss in Jamie Brickhouse's Dazzling “The Brothers Orphan”

The Brothers Orphan

Written and performed by Jamie Brickhouse

Presented by The Great Griffon as part of the Incubator Festival at Pangea

178 Second Ave., Manhattan, NYC

January 26, 2025

Jamie Brickhouse. Photo by Mikiodo
Perennially powerful raconteur and more, Jamie Brickhouse dazzles in the debut of his new show, The Brothers Orphan, a one-man, three-sibling tale of brothers united in the name of having been orphaned … in middle age. Jamie’s stories take us from Beaumont, Texas to Times Square as this dark and funny-as-hell reunion takes shape. Ever the master of voice and storytelling, Brickhouse viscerally renders the collision of Texan brothers Ronny, Jeffrey and Jamie as we navigate, alongside Jamie, what it means to reconnect to family under such challenging circumstances. The Brothers Orphan is a part of Pangea’s “Incubator Festival,” running from January 13th through the 26th. This festival brings together a myriad of talents, as Pangea co-owner and entertainment director Stephen Shanaghan notes, “we want to shine a light on new work that’s hard to categorize sometimes, but that hits us in a deep place,” and it most certainly does so.

From the moment Jamie enters from the back of Pangea’s gorgeous, intimate Cabaret Room space (co-owner and interior design director Arnoldo Caballero y Cespedes’s handiwork), clad in a perfect pair of proper ankle-breaking heels, the audience knows they are in for something fabulous and formidable.

Brickhouse is indeed a force, well known across the socials, Instagram, YouTube, and the daily #storiesinheels TikToks, with over 6M views and 75,000 followers and for his slew of award-winning and acclaimed solo shows: Dangerous When Wet: Booze, Sex, and My Mother, I Favor My Daddy: A Tale of Two Sissies, and Pearl Necklace: A Gay Sexcapade.

With the passing of Daddy Earl, Jamie, the youngest of the three brothers, is forced to take up new responsibilities. Prior to his death, Earl had sent Jamie a copy of her will, and with it, perhaps the world’s most pithy post-it note: “Dear Jamie Poo: Here’s my will. You’re executor. Good luck.” It is with this charge that the brothers are thrown back together under the organizing hand (and blistering wit) of this youngest brother.
Jamie Brockhouse. Photo by Michael Hayes.
From here we move back to 1985 and a 16-year-old Jamie in transit from Beaumont to Houston in the name of a date with Mama June’s shoe salesman from the Galleria, a handsome 23-year-old Richard Gere manqué with a taste for a Marlboro Lights. Jamie regales us with the story of this date interrupted, the unexpected detour to brother Jeffrey’s, the trunk full of Mama Jean’s shoes tumbling around the trunk, and evidence of a deep, protective love between the older, gay, kind Jeffery and his little brother – affectionately “Jim” – but only to Jeffery.

Then it is 1996 and older brother Ronny, or Ron the Roofer as he calls himself, has come to New York. It is Christmas and Ronny has three things on his New York itinerary: to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, The Today Show set, and the titty bars of Times Square (again, it was 1996). Ronny has different nicknames for Jamie: HP Jr., for hotpants that he and Jeffery wore growing up, and Pank, the origins of which are unclear as Jamie muses: “Was it a bastardized, Texas twanged version of pink since I used to wear pink Oxford cloth shirts? Was his mind subliminally telling him that his little brother was queer?” Though this Odyssey ends in something like failure with respect to managing a real drink and full nudity in New York on Christmas, the journey brings the brothers all the closer together, truly close and for the first time.

Daddy Earl passes, as we know he must, and the brothers find themselves together, all of them, and Jamie coins a nickname for this collection, united under these auspices, “The Brothers Orphan,” fittingly labeled as much on a selfie posted to Facebook.

This is where the dynamic shifts, as do the responsibilities of Jamie. A family history of depression, booze and all sets the stage for a back half of Jamie’s performance. The physical, as well as psychic effects of the family must be confronted, not the least of which is a 3,000 square foot home, occupied for 44 years. Really, where does one begin? Jamie wonders the same, then: “I remembered Betty White’s advice as the domestic goddess Sue Ann Nivens from The Mary Tyler Moore Show for cleaning up after a party. Never start in the middle. Start from one end of the house and methodically work your way across. I started in the entry hall.” Sage advice. Inventoried, priced, and sold, furnishings and then the house itself move into new hands, all of which is orchestrated – spiritually and otherwise – by this youngest brother. We contend with a missing lamp, the power of “Everybody’s Talking at Me,” death, and all the rest, arriving with Jamie at a place of peace and reconciliation – but unlike Jamie, without the car payments on Ronny’s long bed, dual transmission F-250.

-Noah Simon Jampol

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