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LeSha' Davis

Roy (Jason Jones), is upset about his brothers, Ollie (Elijah Reed) and Wilson (Dane Shobe), trying to take his farm for themselves. Roy reminded them how hard he worked to have his farmland just for it to be taken away for money.

*The following article is an opinionated review of the Brother’s of the Dust play. May contain spoilers.

The play, “Brother’s of the Dust” is based on an African American family living on a farmhouse in Arkansas in 1958. The play started off with a seemingly regular family with the main characters Roy and his wife Mayetta. Later on in the play, Roy tells Mayetta that he doesn’t want to risk his farm being ruined to get rich off of oil that may or may not be there. Eventually Roy’s brother Wilson and his wife Nella stay at their house since they are poor and realize that they can use the farmland to make money from oil when they visit. They couldn’t convince Roy to allow people to find oil on his farmland since he didn’t want it destroyed in the process. This is when the story starts to get very interesting because this made Nella convince Wilson to try to find ways to take his brother’s farmland in his own hands.

Soon enough, family secrets start to arise and it’s something I didn’t expect and probably the audience never expected. Roy’s wife, Mayetta, had an affair with her husband’s brother, Ollie, seven years ago and it was unclear whether he was Mayetta’s real son’s father. This part of the play creates an assumption that Ollie is not the father since her son, Jack, is ready to leave home and go to college. Who knows if Jack is Roy’s son.

There was a lot of family drama in the story because of the brother’s fighting over the farm inherited from their parents. Though Roy owns and lives in the house, the will states that it’s shared among the brothers after their parents’ passing. With that insight, Roy and Mayetta’s son try to go against them after his uncle convinces him he can pursue his college dreams if he helps him with finding farm oil to get money.

Overall, I think that the play was fantastic and well written. The comedic parts of the play within the drama had the audience stay engaged. I can say that I enjoyed this play and did not expect it to be as good as it was. It reminded me of Tyler Perry’s movie “Madea’s Big Happy Family” which can tell you how good this play was or better. I would watch any play that Darren Canady writes again and would recommend going to see it while it’s still out!

Edited by Stuti Khadka and LeSha’ Davis