Blood Brothers

‘Blood Brothers’ is the play which spawned the much loved, award winning musical ‘Blood Brothers’ (both by the well known author Willy Russell)

If you are a theatre going ‘luvvie’ it is highly likely you will have seen the musical version and like me, probably not seen the play. So I was greatly looking forward to the Saturday evening performance with high expectations and interest.  I was not disappointed… and will go so far to say I was quite overwhelmed by the implications of the story and the excellence of the performances.

In a nutshell… the story tells of the Johnstone twin brothers born into a large impoverished family who for economic reasons are separated at birth, one reared in poverty and the other brought up as an only child in a wealthy household.

Sitting among  the ‘house full’ expectant  audience,  you could hear a pin drop as the curtains opened onto a very basic and drab set… with a brick wall for a backcloth and a couple of doors set into brick walls on either side of the stage representing houses.  In Act 2 we saw a move to the country and a suitable ‘country’ back cloth was in place. A sliding section of a flat was enough to signify a different location.   With few stage props… a beautiful period pram, a bench etc the stage was ready for performers.

The narrator, on stage throughout, linked the show with poetic brilliance, offering prophetic warnings and superstitions. “Did you hear the story of the Johnston twins? As like each other as two new pins.” And so begins a rollercoaster of emotion!

The director had wisely chosen ( with permission) to incorporate the song ‘Marilyn Monroe’ from the musical version… not as an all singing, all dancing routine, but as the means to tell the background to the story very quickly. With help from one actor playing…the husband/the milkman/the gynecologist, Mrs Johnston, sang lightly to a piano accompaniment. It worked well and was a highly amusing start to the play.

And so it continued…with an emotional moment when single parent Mrs Johnston gave one of her newborn twins Edward, to her employer Mrs Lyons and kept Mickey as part of her large and unruly family. Then we moved into enormous fun and laughter as we saw 7 year old Mickey, played by adult 6’ tall Steve Lobley, bored and lonely playing all alone. Then the meeting with Edward, played by adult 5’8” tall Mark Yates, from the big house, and the delicious conversation piece between the two boys… Blood Brothers!  The introduction into the story of Mickey’s friend Linda, played by petite adult Karley Hughes, was a pure delight.

With Mrs Johnston, Mrs Lyons and the Narrator linking the story, we watched friends Mickey, Edward and Linda grow up, through teenage angst, into early twenties and adulthood.  We watched as educated and wealthy Edward’s constant longing for his friendship with Mickey was destroyed by Mickey’s loss of self worth, struggling to make a living to support his wife and family and then finally, when learning that every success he had achieved was as a result of the largess of Edward, he expressed his hatred of his ‘twin’.  Meanwhile Edward’s mother, Mrs Lyons became ever more obsessed with her ‘stolen son’, worrying that he would be taken from her and coaxed by into leaving by Edward’s obvious attraction to the Johnston family. Finally utter disaster…when you could have heard a pin drop in the audience!

The director had worked with her cast, coaxing and cajoling them into the perfect characters they portrayed. They alone brought the story to life and the setting, while the excellent lighting (creating atmosphere), the sound system meaning we didn’t miss a word of dialogue, not to mention the excellent sound effects ( a baby’s cry and air gun shots  hitting an invisible target)   were all excellent but secondary to the performances.

The casting of this play must have been difficult for the director; she had to find 3 adults who were able to convince an audience that they were 7 years old, who then matured to adulthood in the space of 2 hours.

The whole play was well conceived, the pace was terrific and not once was there anything that I (as a past director and an audience member) would have changed so this was direction at its best, very well done Janet Astley.

The result was a feast of gritty realism…. funny, touching and downright emotional in turns. Congratulations to everyone involved in this complex play.

THE CAST

The Narrator-  Colin Astley.  Dressed in black, he was ever present but never obvious, he became the glue which linked each scene. Alternately droll and often disquieting he cast his malevolent predictions across the sad and sorry tale, very well presented. 

Mrs Johnston- Suzanne Salter- Brown. Suzanne was the very essence of a weary, downtrodden single mother of many unruly children. With little money to feed the family she portrayed beautifully the predicament of expecting twins and the dilemma of giving one child away! With a wonderfully constant Liverpool/Scouse accent Suzanne gave a beautifully modulated performance as the play progressed, very well done.

Mrs Lyons- Cate Hill. This was a difficult role to characterize; on the one hand she is the compassionate, benign childless woman who offers ’charity’  when taking a baby from an anxious fraught woman, but her soul knows she is stealing a child to fill a need in herself and consequently spends her whole life worrying that her ‘secret’ will be discovered. Cate managed the two halves of her persona very well, we saw the torture and the pain of need… then loving a child who in a moment could be taken from her… she was the maker of her own destruction. Well drawn, and performed, very well done.

Mickey Johnston- Steve Lobley. Well what a bonus for the director …along comes a first time performer from Liverpool no less, can act, can help the cast with their accents and can turn himself with total realism into a small boy. To the delight of the audience he used his imagination to show an innocent Mickey at play and then his talent and skill as he aged, demonstrating growing bitterness and anguish at his role in life. This was a beautifully considered performance. Steve, you had the audience enthralled. I do hope this is the first of many performances we see from you, a total triumph.

Edward Lyons- Mark Yates. As a contrast to Mickey, Mark couldn’t have been more different, but was equally convincing as a child. Smothered by his mother, he was the epitome of a sad and lonely ‘rich’ only child, and his delight in finding a friend in Mickey and becoming ‘Eddie’ was quite joyful! But his despair when he was taken away from Mickey moved me in tears.  He grew into an intelligent dignified boy who also loved ‘Linda’ but offered her selflessly to Mickey. This was a controlled but very commanding performance; full of deep love for a child/adult he didn’t know was his brother! very well played.

Linda – Karley Hughes.  Karley gave a superb performance as Linda the friend of Mickey and Eddie, as a young child and as a growing teenager and adult. She is a brilliant comedienne with perfect timing her facial expressions when firing the air pistol and her not so coy flirtation with Mickey were so funny, she had the audience in stitches! very well done Karley

CHARACTERS

Tony Sutcliff, Becky Loveday and Rachel Blakemore…each added to the production as a whole, be it singing a Christmas carol or acting as a nurse, a policewoman or in the case of Tony the hysterically funny transition from husband, to milkman to gynecologist all during one song …Such very good talent in cameo roles well done to you all.

‘Blood Brothers’ was a very well rehearsed,  very well acted and directed start to the new season for ’Portishead Players’. ‘Beat that’ as they say.

It was excellent entertainment and I was not alone in the audience wiping a tear from my eye at the final curtain. This production will be remembered by many for a long time. Congratulations to all!

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