Blood Brothers

What a powerful piece of theatre this was. With an extremely effective set that created the brickwork, door and back alley of a tenement on one side and the posher house, including a second storey window, on the other; with a bleak skyscape silhouette backdrop in Act 1 and country scene in Act 2, the acting area was just right. Although the stage is small at the Old Court an extension stage left created enough space for the performance while maintaining the intimacy of the studio format. Good use was also made of the steps and the auditorium while appropriate music or sound effects (a beating heart at one point), downlighters and red washes added to the mood. 

Accents throughout were excellent, sufficient to relocate us to the North West but not so harsh as to grate on the nerves. But what really stood out was the quality of the performances. The company was well cast overall and it was great to see young people take age appropriate roles. However, there was no lack of skill or commitment from the younger actors – they held their own. Those with the larger roles made the most of them and I shall confine my specific comments to them.

The Narrator (Stuart Moore) was consistently strong, fluent, yet slightly menacing as the harbinger of bad news. Cat Bailey as Mrs Johnstone was outstanding; her accent, vocal inflections, singing quality and range of emotions captured the role exactly. She had an attractive vulnerability and despite all her travails her emotional state seemed to equilibrate around love and optimism in equal measure, making the finale all the more moving, without being mawkish.

Chris Edwards as Mickey Johnstone could do no wrong. His energetic physicality and fluidity of speech and action set the bar for future Mickeys as seven year olds, while his spontaneous laughter, embarrassment and sometimes self-consciousness defined the teenage years. Later, as a shuffling depressive with shaking hands and zero self-esteem he was also totally convincing. His interaction with Eddie (Mark Ellis) was full on, and Mark fed off this, maintaining the ultra-posh persona in the early scenes and gradually relaxing as a teenage child almost certainly would.  The contrast in voice, aggression and social niceties between Mickey and Eddie are what made this a joy to watch, with even the approach to riding an imaginary horse creating huge laughter from the audience.  Mark’s interaction with Linda was also good. Linda (Holly Hosler-White) represented a halfway house in social standing between Mickey and Eddie. She had a lovely gentle Liverpudlian accent and managed to tread the fine line between wholesome teenager and flirtatious tease. While her relationship with Eddie was clearly doomed she nevertheless elicited sympathy from the audience and portrayed a nicely nuanced character. Finally, Andrea Dalton’s Mrs Lyons was a delightfully repressed, pinched, possessive and ultimately vindictive character, who clearly made life difficult for those around her- another great performance.

Overall this was a polished yet exuberant, funny yet sad, vibrant yet ultimately heart-wrenching production. The dialogue was good, the plot strong and the absence of songs (for the musical purist) mattered not a jot since the interjections of verse were seamless yet powerful punctuations within the whole piece. 

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