“All we need is someone to keep the eye for us. Look at y’ Mickey, What have y’ got? Nothin’, like me Mam. Where y’ takin’ y’ tart for New Year?”
This is the point where Mickey makes the fatal error.
“Where y’ takin’ y’ tart for New Year?”, suggests that he is the tragic hero, doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons. Furthermore Mickey is the one that dies, not Mrs Johnstone, Implying the roles have switched.
Moreover, catharsis is created when you start to feel pity for Mrs Johnstone, the original Hero. We feel sorry for her, as we know her sons are going to die, because this is portrayed in the opening of the production. The audience has also witnessed the different love stories and strains, making them feel more involved.
Personally I think the Narrator plays a prime role in the production, in many different ways. Firstly I will discuss his performance on stage. The Narrator is always somewhere on the stage, whether it be lurking in the alleys or visible central stage.
We, as the audience, are not told but we are given the impression that he cannot be seen by the characters on stage. Although, right through the play there are small moments where he hands the characters objects or gets in the way of a character on stage, consequently making eye contact with the characters, giving the perception he has been seen. Yet as soon as the narrator and characters’ loose eye contact, they seem to forget about seeing him and carry on with the activity they were previously doing. This implies that he is just a picture in the characters mind like a devil, something they didn’t want to see so try to forget about seeing him and carry on. Furthermore the audience also get this feeling that he is the devil, as he sings the lyrics, “You know the devil’s got your number, you know he’s gonna find you, you know he’s right behind you, he’s staring through your window, he’s knocking on your door”.
And while he is singing this he is staring through the window of the room that Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons are in and he looks as if he is about to knock of the door. For this reason the audience get the idea he is the devil, from the link between his actions and lyrics.
Nonetheless it could be disputed that he is not the devil as in some snippets of the play he sympathizes with certain characters. This is expressed when Linda is running after Mickey and he holds her back, as he represents predestination and knows something dreadful will happen if he lets her go.
Additionally he is characterized as the person that resembles Fate. He is thought of like this for countless reasons. One of the main reasons for this is due to the fact that he hands Mrs Lyons the bible, prompting her to act on superstition.
Also this is exemplified in the song ‘Shoes upon the table’, which is repeated throughout the play, this song represents a both the idea that he is the devil and fate. The lyrics, “You know…” are repeated throughout the song. This implies everything that is going to happen is already known by the narrator as he sings this to the characters. He wouldn’t know that any of this was going to happen if he did not represent this.
Moreover, the Narrator is thought of as a very powerful character. Russell, however, does this in a very subtle manner. He does this in many different ways, one being the intention that the Narrator is always on a higher surface than other characters, thus giving the supposition that he is closer to god therefore having a greater power than other characters. In conjunction with this he wears simple dark clothes and has a blank emotion on his face, giving him a neutral status, as we can’t identify anything about him. His dress sense also gives the audience the idea he is dressed for a dark occasion, such as a funeral. This fits in with the idea that he represents Fate, because he knows they are going to die.
During the time when Willy wrote this play, social class difference was a strong talking point, this is well put across from start to finish in the performance, through clothing, setting and language.
The language is paramount to the idea of social structure, as it appears so often. A prime example of this is when Mickey and Eddy first meet and Mickey teaches Eddy taboo words, such as “pissed” and “the F word”. The fact that Mickey knows these words proposes he has been allowed to have the exposure to these words as he hasn’t had the money to occupy himself in other ways.
Russell’s use of colloquial language, swearing and abbreviated speech, linked with a varying vocabulary, between the two 7 year olds is intended to indicate to the audience the way in which their upbringing have already, even at this young age, affected their ability to operate in society. He wants the audience to recognize that the boy’s different class background differs with great intensity.
At the age of seven when the twins first meet the up-bringing they have had becomes extremely apparent through Russell’s excellent use of language in the dialogue. When talking about their mothers, Mickey uses the term “mam”, this signifies that Mickey is from a poorer background as the audience would generally link this sort of language with someone from a poorer, un-educated background. However, Edward uses the word “mummy”, the automatically gives the audience a presumption that he is better off, being a term more commonly associated with people of a higher class. In conjunction with this “mummy”, infers that because the Lyons were better of, Mrs Lyons had more time to spend with her child and this term confirms this as it suggests the pair were closer, because Mrs Lyons wasn’t having to go out to work and earn a living, unlike Mrs Johnstone.
Additionally in their first dialogue as a pair, Mickey tends to use slang such as “’cos” and “gis a”, this implies that he has been brought up around language like this, which obviously portrays the fact he is from a lower class. On the other hand Edward pronounces words fully, which tells the audience he has better educated parents that have bought him up to say words like this.
As children Edward and Mickey get into trouble with the police and when the policeman goes to speak to the parents he speaks to them in very different natures. When he is talking to Mrs Johnstone he is very abrupt, he swears and calls her “love”. Yet on the other hand when he is talking to Mr Lyons he makes a joke, he is polite and calls him “sir”, and this infers that he has more respect for Mr Lyons because he is wealthier and from an upper-class background.
Also, Mr Lyons pours the policeman a glass of whiskey showing that firstly, The Lyons can afford to do this, but most importantly the fact that he is so well-educated, he can calculated such a sly plan, to get the better of the policeman .Willy uses the policeman to show a strong sense of hierarchy between the two classes. The way he speaks down to Mrs Johnstone suggests she is low down in the hierarchy and deserves to be treated poorly. Yet when speaking to Mr Lyons, he speaks to him with a lot more authority, inferring that because Mr Lyons is high up, he doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.
When Edward and Mickey are younger Edward is always dressed in smart clean clothes that change everyday. Where as Mickey wears clothing half his size with rips in them and continuously wears these items for the duration of the characters younger stages of life. This suggests to the audience that Edward is able to afford nice new clothes, while Mickey has to wear ‘hand-me-downs’ due to his mothers poor income.
Not to mention when the boys are at school the cross-cutting between the two different school scenes (Edward’s boarding school and Mickey’s comprehensive school), the teacher who is played by the same character makes an incisive change between the two types of teacher. When he is Edward’s school teacher, he is wearing a black cape and a black mortarboard; he looks extremely smart and holds a good posture. Along with this he calls Edward “Lyons” and Edward calls him “Sir”, this shows that he has authority. Yet as soon as he switches to Mickey’s school teacher he wears an un-tucked shirt and no tie and holds himself in a slouched position. He calls his students “lad”, as well as this he uses slang such as “y’borin” indicating he is not very well educated, but is all the school could afford.
The setting is vital to the representation of class difference in Blood Brothers. To start with the diversity between two houses is exquisite, not only the exterior but the interior as well. The stage is split into two with a street separating the two halves; this is the first variation between the two classes because of the metaphorical reference to there being a big divide between rich and poor.
On one side of the street in a number of small terraced houses but on the other side is just one big house. The idea of plural houses and one singular implies that better-off people has a bigger importance in the world than the less well-off.
Inside the houses, the interior of the Lyon’s house is deluxe, with detailed wallpaper, shiny wooden furniture and large class windows, as well as being very large as the living room extends right across the stage when being used, compared to the Johnstone’s plain, very cramped, shabby kitchen. The discrepancy between the two exaggerates affluence that the Lyon's have.
Willy Russell adopts the idea of nature and nurture into the play through the character Linda. But one is more powerful than the other; in the case of “Blood Brothers”, Willy makes it become apparent that nurture has a lot more to do with the outcome of the twin’s life. Where you live, settles what sort of live you lead, this was very true at the time Willy Russell wrote the play. In Mickey and Edwards’s case this was made apparent, while they started off as two very similar boys who enjoyed playing games and running about, it was fated for the two boys to lead two very different adult hoods.
When Mrs Lyons chooses which baby she is having, it is very much at random although as the performance continues, the audience are able to realise just how in-different the two boys could have been.
When the boys are mid-teens they are both going through education at separate schools, yet they are both strong minded which ends up with them both being suspended from school at around about the same time. The idea that it was because of their strong mindedness puts into perspective how alike they are.
Too add to this there is a song called “That Guy” in the play, Mickey and Edward both sing this song. A line in the songs says “I wish I was a bit like that guy”,
It is all about how they want to be each other and want to live the other ones life; this is dramatic irony as they could have been each other if Mrs Lyons was to go for the other child. So once again it all falls back on that fatal decision she made. If she hadn’t had separated them at birth, would they be the people they are now?
Willy Russell very cleverly makes structural foreshadowing a pressing point in the play. There are some really bold examples throughout the play. Through different stage of growing up Mickey always has a gun involved in his day to day life, for instance when he is really young they play cowboys and Indians and he shoots people with his toy gun and when Sammy comes home after the shooting of a man he hides it under a floor board. This proves vital as when Mickey actually comes to shooting Eddy like he used to when they were young he uses the one from under the floor boards.
To add to this Edward has always been the one giving Mickey stuff, when they were little it was small thing such as giving him a sweet, then in teenage years it advances to cigarettes and finally in adulthood he ends up giving him a home and a job.
** Conclusion- Speak to sir about it! **