ORPHANS Starring Alec Baldwin is a Sure Win

The word Orphan indicates a child without parents.  It also means a child permanently bereaved.  This play is about 2 brothers living together.  Their father abandoned them @ a young age and their mother has died.   The wounds impaled by the deprivation of love are soon apparent.  What is not clear in the beginning, which brother is more needy.  Phillip the mentally challenged, house bound brother, is played touchingly by Tom Sturridge. Treat (Ben Foster) is the big brother who supports them via armed robbery.  Treat has a vicious temperament but demonstrates tenderness for Phillip.  Treat has a short fuse and resorts quickly to violence.  Late one night, Treat brings home an inebriated Harold (Alec Baldwin) thinking him an easy mark.  While Harold is passed out, he is bound & gagged by Treat.  The next morning while Treat is out & Phillip is watching (not touching) Harold pulls a Harry Houdini move.  He frees himself of the ropes & gag to the amazement of Phillip.  The audience too is amazed that once freed, why Harold does not flee.  Act II opens to a very different situation.  Harold has become Treat's mentor and Phillip's friend - to what end?  Who is the victim, who is in control and who stands the most to lose?  The equilibrium between the brothers shifts with Harold as the catalysis.  The 3 actors are all so stirring in their roles that you empathize with all 3 "dead end kids."  Houdini himself would be taken in by ORPHANS.