Critical evaluation †blood brothers Essay

The bunk did not pass on with the curtain going up just instead with the lights going up. My seat was in the gallery, which is quite high up, barely after I got oer the sense of vertigo my view of the play was fine. I could not view the gantry at the back of the spirit level or the very figurehead of the stage, but very little of the action took place in these aras. The play was written in the un quantifyly 1960s by the Liverpudlian dramatist Willy Russell and was prime(prenominal) performed in the early 1980s. The play is a deletion of feel, or an impression of life starting in Liverpool in the early 1960s through until the 1980s, of poor running(a) differentiate families.The play combines euphony and poesy with narrative. The set of Blood Brothers consisted of, on either side of the stage a row of terraced ho example fronts. At the back of the stage at that place was a gantry which was used by the narrator and once by Mrs. Johnston when she sang a poesy that was an overview of the action that had just optn place, there was a countryside backc make outh with two moveable brick wall flats which moved crossways to cover this. The set was very appropriate for the play, it combined well with the slice of life. The props were minimalist and brought on stage by the actors.thither were four moveable flats, two that slid across the floor and two that came charge from the ceiling. All the costumes and fixings were appropriate for the era of the play, they worked well together producing a realistic setting. The play opens with the twin brothers, lying down on stretchers and consequently(prenominal) being carried away. The narrator then informs the audience of the events that have just happened and then the play begins. The play is ab forth Mrs. Johnston, a working class take of seven churlren who after her hubby has left her for a younger fair sex discovers she is meaning(a) with twins.Mrs. Johnston is a cleaner who works for a middle class couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lyons. Mrs. Johnston tells Mrs. Lyons of her predicament and so Mrs. Lyons who squirt not have children of her own and whose husband has g wizard away on business for six months offers to take one of the twins for herself and get him up as her own. After nearly eyeshot Mrs. Johnston gives one of the boys to Mrs. Lyons. She finds it difficult to reinforcement Mrs. Johnston on as her cleaner because she potful see that there is a bond between mother and child and so fires her.Several categorys pass, the boys be directly seven, nearly eight, they pit when out playing, manufacture great friends and Blood Brothers. Both Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Lyons try to keep the boys apart but be unable to do so. In a desperate attempt to separate the boys the Lyons move to a house in the country well away from rice paddy and the estate where the Johnstons live. A few years later the council decide to demolish the estate where the Johnstons live and relocate the famili es to the countryside close to where the Lyons now live. paddy field has a lady friendfriend, Linda, a daughter he has known since childhood.One day when they are out walking they come across Eddie, (rice paddys twin), and rekindle their friendship. The twins are now sixteen years old and their friendship continues to grow until it is time for Eddie to gone away to university. However Eddie declares his love for Linda before leaving but she continues her descent with Mickey and soon waterfall pregnant with his child and so they marry and move into Mickeys home. Mickeys aged brother, Sammy, gets into trouble and Mickey agrees to help him out but instead ends up taking the fall for Sammy killing a man and goes to prison for seven years.During this time he becomes depressed and withdrawn from Linda. She turns to Eddie for support and they soon become emotionally attached. When Eddies mother becomes aware of the romance she tells Mickey who, now out of prison, goes to Eddies work pla ce. Mrs. Johnston now feels she must tell the boys that they are brothers but this is too much for Mickey to understand in his represent mental state, distressed and confused he shoots Eddie. Just as Mickey is doing this a policeman takes aim and fires killing Mickey. Both men are dead. On the whole the script and the play were very good.At first it took a little time to get in to the play but it soon flowed naturally. The play held the audiences interest by the use of the narrator who appeared on the stage behind the action and would burst into song. A lot of information was given on the characters through the use of song, so the audience received much of the necessary information without realising it. The part of Mrs. Johnston was vie by the singer and actress Dennis Nolan. Ms. Nolan described the history of her character through the song Just kindred Marilyn Monroe. Her story is not extraordinary or uncommon.A girl from a Roman Catholic working class family who falls in love w ith a young man who takes her dancing and says she looks a lot like Marilyn Monroe. Romance soon fades once the babies start arriving. perhaps because of her faith, which would have instilled a belief that children are a blessing, she soon has a large family and her husband begins to look elsewhere for what he first install attractive in his wife. He begins to go dancing with a girl who he says looks a lot like Marilyn Monroe. When he leaves home Mrs. Johnston discovers she is pregnant with the twins of the story.This is when the events that lead up to the final tragedy really begin. Mickey is the twin that Mrs. Johnston kept. He grows up in this very poor working class family but as a child is mainly euphoric and full of mischief. He does not expect an easy life and accepts who he is and what his future will be. He does not expect to go to university like his friend Eddie because in his mind and at this time it was usually notwithstanding children from better off families who w ent. Mickey would have been happy to work and bring up his children in a working class family.It is unemployment and bad choices that take away his pride and his future. He becomes very depressed, feels worthless and finally sees his mating fall apart. The actor who played Mickey had to act the part of a child through to an adult, his mannerisms were very good and his gestures appropriate for the different ages. When he was seven Mickey acted and moved as if he was seven and when he was twenty he acted and moved like a twenty year old. His utterance changed as well, it moved from a high quick voice to a deeper more solemn one.Linda is the childhood friend of Mrs. Johnstons children and especially of Mickey. The two children grow up together, play together and become girl and boyfriend. This relationship is threatened by Lindas attraction to Eddie, Mickeys twin, but although she realises that it is Eddie that she loves she does not end her relationship with Mickey. When Eddie goes away to university she becomes pregnant with Mickeys child and marries him. Lindas role in the play is huge, it is her relationship with Eddie which finally destroys Mickey and leads to the final tragedy.The play contained quite a lot of swearing but this was only used to aid the script and do it more realistic. At the end of the play many people in the audience were in tears which showed how good the performances had been. As a honest play this would have been a very sad story of some very hard lives but because the story is told partly in song the mood is much lighter. It shows that there can be laughter in even the most difficult of lives, but also how our own upbringing, superstitions and prejudices can make our lives more complicated and more difficult.