As the curtain rises at Oxford Playhouse, the bodies of two brothers lie under blankets bathed in a sickening red light. Surrounded by police and onlookers, something terrible has happened.
From this grim introduction to Blood Brothers, we’re then whisked back to where the story began; the future Johnstone parents meeting at a dance and jiving around the dance floor. Immediately gripped, the future looks bright, which begs the question – where did it all go wrong?
The writer of this classic 40-year-old musical, Willy Russell, might answer with one word: poverty. Because after giving birth to twins, the now single mother and cleaning-lady Mrs. Johnstone concedes that she just doesn’t have the means to bring up both boys, and reluctantly agrees to hand one over to the childless and desperate-to-adopt Mrs. Lyons, who thus grow up on very different sides of the tracks.
An unrestrained roar of approval from the audience, and a heartfelt standing ovation, demonstrated why Blood Brothers is still in business
Enhanced by the superb 1950s Liverpool terraced-street stage set – a believably gritty visual treat – the cast’s appropriately strong Scouse accents, holey-jumpers, period piece prams, bawdy humour and milk bottles, propel the bitter-sweet story forward.
Moving songs such as ‘Marilyn Monroe’, and the tear-jerking belter ‘Tell Me It’s Not True’, aided by narrator Kristofer Harding‘s wonderfully wheeling, rhyming verse, only emphasise that Blood Brothers obviously isn’t a glitzy, feel-good, laugh-a-minute show.
The intense performances from the cast are however exceptional; particularly Vivienne Carlyle’s well-meaning but powerless Mrs. Johnstone, and Sean Jones READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH HIM HERE who dazzles with his ability to play Mickey from a bubbly seven-year-old to a worn out and beleaguered twenty-something, to ensure that Blood Brothers absorbs every second of your attention.
The intense performances from the cast are exceptional
As the plot continues to thicken, we helplessly watch Mickey and Edward meeting, hitting it off and becoming sworn ‘blood brothers’, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are actual siblings.
As they grow up, their life choices, and nature versus nurture stature, play their parts in the boys’ fortunes and misfortunes. And – it is heavily suggested by an ominous, omni-present narrator – so too does fate, as we reach their devastating climax, sobbing breaking out around the Playhouse auditorium.
An unrestrained roar of approval emanated from the audience at the end, and a heartfelt standing ovation demonstrated once again why Blood Brothers is still in business, and how it earned its record-breaking 10,000-performance run in London’s West-End.
As the cast took their bows, they appeared too emotionally involved and wrung out to smile, as were we. A hard-hitting and extraordinary show. Blood Brothers blows you away.
Edward Bliss
BLOOD BROTHERS is at Oxford Playhouse until Saturday September 26. BOOK HERE
