blood brothers plot & character summary

Drama Assessment By Lauren Dunn

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The play we have been working on ‘Blood Brothers’. The plot of the story is about a pair of twins who got separated at birth, but their backgrounds in life take them to different paths which lead to opposite social lives. The play had a first run at West End in London in 1983 and it is written by Willy Russell. The play was set in Liverpool in 1962 and continues for around 20 years. The main theme in the play is the different classes i.e. Mrs Johnstone and Mickey being from a not so rich background so they are in lower-middle class, whereas Mrs Lyons is very rich which means she is in upper class. The other themes are; Class, Violence Superstition/Religion, and Parenting & Family Values. The style of the piece is naturalistic but also has some variety of non-naturalistic drama into it. I think that the aim for Willy Russell’s play was to demonstrate the classes of his time period, but also to make the audience to think about why there are even classes and how they think and act around each other. It’s also to make people think about what the effect of their actions do to the people. He would like the audience to think about the reason why the classes treat each other, which is because of the amount of money they have! Which Willey Russell thinks it isn’t right, as he shows how their lives changes for which classes they are in, and makes it effective by showing how their paths in life go as they get older. My scene is where Sammy and his friends are having a go at Mickey, but Linda steps in and helps/sorts it out. Sammy is the main one of his friends, and he does like to show off in front of his friends but also don’t really pay attention to anything much, whereas Mickey doesn’t, Mickey is more of a quiet/shy boy who puts his head down with education and focuses on the important things in life. I would like to achieve for them to think about the classes of that time period and what is was like to get something you wanted, but also to make the audience think about how they would have got it if they were in a lower class.
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This particular scene is good to direct because it shows what Sammy and Mickey are like when they aren’t friends (or Blood Brothers) My scene is different because in the play when Mickey and Sammy are friends, they are all nice and friendly to each other, whereas this scene isn’t like that at all. Sammy shows that he doesn’t like Mickey and because Mickey has been brought up in an upper class, he doesn’t really fight Mickey verbally. For our scene we are using leather jackets for Sammy and his friends, but for Mickey he/she will be wearing something classier other than casual which is what Mickey wears. This scene is good to act because it makes you think about how the classes used to act towards each other and how they acted themselves e.g. The upper class is always expected to get married and have a good job, whereas the lower class is most likely to not even have a job or at least have a small pay on one.
Working progress 1st paragraph
I am playing Sammy, and I am performing him when he is having a go at Mickey just for the fun out of it as he likes to show off. Sammy is a lower class person, he walks very sluggish but has a bit of swag to his walk, and he has a natural accent (Liverpool). He also sits like he is slouching. He does all of this because this shows that he is a lower class person and that he is the main person out of his group (or gang).