Blood Brothers

Infamously, the musical which gets a standing ovation after every performance, Blood Brothers is a unique show. Its writer Willy Russell has always been keen to point out that it is not a musical, but rather a play with songs. If this notion sounds confusing then, once you’ve been to see it, things should become a lot clearer. Gone is high-camp, big dance routines and a cast who seem to have smiles permanently implanted onto their faces. In their place are gritty, hard songs set against scenes of social deprivation in Liverpool and the terrible social divisions which class can cause.

Being played out at the Phoenix Theatre, the show charts the story of two women, Mrs. Johnstone and Mrs. Lyons, from different sides of the class divide. Mrs. Johnstone already has too many children, the “welfare have been on to her” as she comments early on in the show, and so when she falls pregnant with twins she wonders how on earth she’s going to cope. Mrs. Lyons has been desperate for a child for some years and when she learns Mrs. Johnstone, employed as her cleaner, is expecting fraternal twins, she begs her employee to give one to her. Not knowing what else to do, Mrs. Johnstone agrees to the deal, not realising what tragedy will ultimately unfold from it. The secrets begin to unravel, set against a backdrop of Mrs. Lyons’ increasing paranoia, the destructive friendship of the twin boys, Mickey and Eddie, in later life and the superstitions which keep the story bound together. It is said, that if two twins separated at birth ever find out the truth, they will both immediately die; such a threat keeps the show hanging on a knife-edge all the way to its dramatic finale.

It’s not all as depressing as it sounds though, the early singings of the ongoing overture ‘Marilyn Monroe’ provide laughs and the optimism at the move away to the countryside at the end of the first act is portrayed wonderfully. All the actors also do a great job of playing children at the start of the play; what could become caricature actually comes across as serious acting. Ultimately the play will make you consider the question, did superstition play a part in what you saw unfold, or was it simply, as the narrator says, “what we British have come to know as class”