Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, Birmingham Hippodrome, 30 April 2024 until 04 May 2024.

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: David Gray & Paul Gray

“A powerful and moving show that is still as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.”

Blood Brothers is a show that is all the better for defying categorisation. It eschews the conventions and peppiness of the modern stage musical. Its musical and dramatic elements are too well integrated to call it a play with music. So, we might be best falling back on Russell’s own definition of it as ‘a Liverpudlian folk opera’.

Certainly the Show’s use of strophic songs as a narrative device is firmly rooted in folk tradition. And the text is shot through with poetry and references to superstition and vernacular lore. But, the main argument for its status as a folk-work is its honest and unflinching exploration of the lives of very ordinary people.

Russell’s narrative is well controlled. He moves with pace through the opening section of exposition, solidly laying the situational groundwork of the story. Russell also establishes the basis of a web of imagery which he builds on to great effect as the play develops. Niki Colwell Evans as Mrs Johnston effortlessly establishes herself as a pivotal presence and convincingly inhabits her character’s transformation from flighty young woman to careworn matriarch.

The script deals uncompromisingly with the desperate poverty of her situation. Colwell Evans powerfully conveys the emotional turmoil and agony of the choice Mrs Johnston faces in having to give up one of her children. A spare, but textured and grainy production design, adds to the impression that the Johnston’s live in a gritty and comfortless milieu. One is shocked to be brought face-to-face with a depiction of childhood poverty that is so very relevant today.

The narrative skips forward and we find ourselves in the company of the separated twins, now aged seven. Here, Russell’s script is a joy in the way it convincingly sees the world through the eyes and imaginations of children. The adult actors are all quite marvellous in their physical, vocal and emotional transformation; they really become the children they are portraying. Sean Jones as the young Mickey is particularly compelling. There is a deep poignancy in the way he glimpses his family’s destitution and feels the hurt of it without fully comprehending it.

Inevitably this is a political work. In the final scene the Narrator considers whether the tragedy has been brought about by fate, or the workings of the class-system. But despite its politics the play avoids polemics, because it is chiefly interested in how the characters emotionally negotiate their place within the social structure.

The rapid deterioration of the relationship between the two twins is well-handled and well-acted. As is Mickey’s psychological disintegration. And the actors build the emotional crescendo of the second act with total commitment, leading to a shattering climax.

Blood Brothers remains, after 40 years, a stunningly powerful piece of theatre and one that is, depressingly, still very relevant today.

Cast

Mrs Johnston – Niki Colwell Evans

Narrator – Scott Anson

Mickey – Sean Jones

Eddie- Joe Sleight

Mrs Lyons – Sarah Jane Buckley

Linda – Gemma Brodrick

Sammy – Timothy Lucas

Mr Lyons – Tim Churchill

Policeman/Teacher – Alex Harland

Donna Marie/Miss Jones – Chloe Pole

Postman/Bus conductor – Greame Kinniburg

Perkins – Danny Knott

Neighbour – Josh Capper

Brenda – Jess Smith

Creatives

Book, music and lyrics by Willy Russell

Directed by Bob Tomson & Bill Kenwright

Resident Director – Tim Churchill

Music Supervisor – Matt Malone

Designer – Andy Walmsley

Lighting – Nick Richings

Sound – Dan Samson