Blood Brothers Essay

The play ‘Blood Brothers’ is written by the playwright Willy Russell, who explores the advantages and disadvantages of growing up in a working-class or a first-class environment in mid 20th century Liverpool. Russell uses his experiences, growing up in working-class Liverpool, to cover how the class system determined your life chances. This is explored through issues of injustice and socialism throughout. ‘Blood Brothers’ is not a typical musical, being of a naturalistic style, but, as Willy Russell described it ‘a play with songs’, which, untraditionally, presents the final scene at the outset of the play. However, it involves traditional musical aspects, such as the use of lyrical and physical elements to tell the story and express emotion, in addition to the importance of music. ‘Blood Brothers’ is brought back to 1960’s Liverpool through the use of scenery, costume, lighting and accent, this being obvious to the audience immediately. I saw ‘Blood Brothers’ on 28th November 2013 at 7:30pm in the Princess Theatre, Torquay, a traditionally laid-out theatre with a proscenium arch and end-on staging.
At the beginning of Act 1, Russell has chosen to show the final scene right at the outset of the play, this being a dramatic device to change the way in which the audience view and enjoy the play; from making assumptions of the ending, to seeing how the ending is achieved. The play starts with no-one on stage, the scenery representing a section of a working-class, with the city of Liverpool at night in the background. Tense, woodwind music begins, and the lights turn red, to cause the audience to immediately establish that something bad is going to happen. Then music’s volume then increases, to sound like loud, organ-played funeral music, playing the introduction of the song ‘Tell me it’s not true.’ The lighting then turns blue, and the cast start to sing harmoniously, gradually filing onto the stage to form a semi-circle around two stretchers to which Mickey and