Theatre Review by our Theatre Reviewer Jonah Zalick #OnePlymouth
I was a newcomer to Blood Brothers when I saw it at the Theatre Royal Plymouth on August 17, though I knew it was a beloved musical since 1983, running an amazing amount of over 10,000 performances in London’s West-End (it is only one of three musicals to reach that feat). Being aware of this, I was excited to see what was in store.
Brothers Mickey and Eddie are born as fraternal twins but are separated at birth. The reason for their separation; their birth mother, Mrs. Johnstone, is unable to care for two more children, her lot of seven already unruly and financially difficult to care for. Eddie is adopted into the Lyons family, a wealthy one, while Mickey stays with his birth mother, the two not knowing of their twin. With the two brothers growing up in dramatically different environments, their lives differ wildly – Mickey is boisterous and often rough-and-tumble playing with his siblings, sporting a heavy Liverpudlian accent, while Eddie is raised demure, with an affected accent, and never having learned a swear. After a chance meeting, the two forge an instantaneous bond and swear to become blood brothers – though they are still not aware of their familial link. Neither of them could possibly predict what would become of each other.
Written by Willy Russell and being a commentary performance on nature versus nurture, Blood Brothers is an astounding observation on class and how drastically peoples’ lives will differ because of it. A poignant truth that was conveyed powerfully through the classic is that those from the ‘lower class’ get less ease in ‘growing up’ – if any – than those from the ‘upper class’. As the show tells us, the former children often must thrust themselves into jobs to simply support livelihood and are more at risk of financial difficulty – the show makes an example of the 1980s recession – while the latter children may have more time to ‘kick back’ and enjoy time at university, or other fun pursuits, because they have the comfort of their family’s money for support.
The phenomenal Lyn Paul returns to reprise her role as Mrs. Johnstone in her farewell tour of the show; she made her debut in musical theatre in the West End as Mrs. Johnstone in 1997, and her talent is as powerfully unabated as ever. There was something utterly emotive about her stirring voice. This is no shock, of course, considering her magnificent career and her renown as ‘the definitive Mrs. Johnstone’.
Alexander Patmore’s performance was also immensely powerful, especially in depicting Mickey’s struggle-filled journey from his teenage years through to his twenties. What particularly touched me was his portrayal of Mickey after he is diagnosed with chronic depression and becomes addicted to his antidepressants. Patmore’s performance conveyed a touching sense of inner turmoil raging inside of a man who doesn’t understand how, and is too defeated by life, to cope.
What I was treated to was a fantastic cast performing an incredibly important musical about how even if two people are as close as twins, the class system will absolutely define their lives in shocking and alternate ways if they are of different circumstances. An authentic tale, it should also perhaps serve as a lesson to those with a bias in judging and treating people differently due to how ‘educated’ they might seem, how much money they may or may not have, and who, or how big, their family is.
Theatre Review by our Theatre Reviewer Jonah Zalick #OnePlymouth
