The two main characters that Russell has created, Mickey and Edward are first shown when they’re seven years old. Seven is probably a good time to start because they are beginning to have opinions, if only naïve ones. When Mickey first appears nothing seems to be striking about his character but just a few lines in this scene are worthy of note.
Mickey is complaining to his mum (Mrs Johnston) that Sammy has stolen his best gun.
“M’am, our Sammy’s robbed me other gun an’ that was
me best one. Why does he rob all me things off me?
(Act 1, page 96)
What I think that Russell was trying to put across there was the question “Why is life unfair?” Mickey has had his best gun stolen and he’s quite annoyed about it, as a seven year old child this is the kind of thing that he gets annoyed about. When Mickey is older though he becomes annoyed about much more serious things like: Why has my job been taken away? Why has Linda been stolen from me? The deeper meaning that can be taken from the first thing Mickey says: Why is life unfair? Is shown continually throughout the play as that’s what the play is basically about. So as a director I could show this “deeper meaning” by perhaps adding a “Kevin and Perry” style moan. Also possibly getting the actor to put emphasis on the “why?” would be making the important link to “why is life unfair”.
There is the gun which is only a toy, but nevertheless a gun. The gun is at the very start of Mickey’s role and at the very end of Mickey’s role, a director should make sure that it is very visible to the audience throughout the scene. A gun could be a symbol, which can in turn be interpreted in a number of different ways; maybe Russell’s telling us that if Mickey hadn’t had a toy gun as a child then he wouldn’t have you used the gun when he was older. Yet another could argue that the gun was his only outlet of frustration in a world that would not listen to him or give him a chance and pretending to shoot Indians relieves his frustrations. The gun could mean so many different things so I guess it could be something that’s left for the viewer to work out for themselves. The rest of the scene with his mother doesn’t seem to be of much symbolic importance, it is merely building up an image of his character.
The first thing that Edward says is “Hello” perhaps Edward is showing that he hasn’t realised that life is unfair and is just living completely unaware. The director needs to show Edward being forthcoming and completely naïve; Edward needs to be very trusting, instead of standing back or being in a relaxed position he should be very close to Mickey and leaning in excitedly because doesn’t feel threatened but only because he never has done. Mickey however will appear cautious because that’s the way he’s been brought up, but I think that his suspicion should be dispersed by the proposal of sweets. The director needs to be aware of what the two boys are wearing, because this will be the audience’s first impression of the two main characters, they will immediately build up an impression from what they’re wearing. The point of that is, that the boys will only be dressed like that because of how their parents dressed them so it is only showing what class they are in, not what they are like. Now that is very important because if you dress the two boys in the stereotypical way for their class it will probably lead most of the audience to stereotypical views. And the play is stereotypical in the way that the working class person doesn’t succeed; the middle class person does and has a nice life just because they’re middle class. A director would have to be aware of what the boys are wearing because they can be used to show an important point. If the boy’s are dressed in school uniform it will create a stereotype and also make a point about how education isn’t fair. So Edward would be dressed in smart short trousers with high socks, polished shoes, V neck school jumper and school tie to show he’s well off and goes to a good school. Mickey should be dressed in shorts, have dirty knees, tatty shoes, and a worn sweater, that wouldn’t really be his school uniform though because the primary school he goes to probably won’t have a school uniform.
So the relationship between the two characters is set quickly and develops into them becoming blood brothers and very good friends. The parts where the boys say that their mothers won’t let them play where the other lives are very important parts, they need to be emphasized so that the audience picks up on it. The best way to emphasize this I think is just for the character to boldly and loudly say the line “My mum doesn’t let me play down here” because it shows that they are not supposed to be friends but they are friends because their social class doesn’t effect them. I think their mothers in this part telling them not to play with each other are supposed to symbolise their social classes telling them not to play with each other. The problem with all this symbolism is that it’s difficult for a director to show a symbol if the audience isn’t thinking like that, you can emphasise the symbol but only up to a certain point before it gets out of hand.
When Edward moves away they don’t see each other for about six years and not much has happened in that six years. Russell must have put this unnatural time jump in the play for a reason. The reason I think that he put this unnatural time jump in was to show how the characters and have grown up as they have spent more time away from each other they have drifted further apart; this could be shown with music, perhaps a song that seems to last too long. As far as I can see the main reason for having a song is just to show the gap because a play couldn’t have five minutes of nothing happening so Russell put a song there unless of course he liked musicals. But a song can still carry the same message as an actor just talking to the audience for ten minutes which would get tedious after a while. Apart from those few reasons I can’t really come up with a main reason for Blood Brothers being a musical perhaps it’s just because they’re more entertaining than ordinary plays.
So when the boys meet again Mickey still has his cocky attitude and he has a lot of pride, when he’s with Linda aged fourteen (just before Edward comes in) he’s very careful not to look like a fool but he’s too overcautious. When Linda is messing around with Mickey telling him to be gentle whilst pulling her free, he responds almost angrily saying “Will you stop taking the piss out of me!” So he’s really trying to be very protective of himself. So under his cocky attitude he really isn’t very confident. Edward’s character changes as well, he is more grown up in the way that he acts, he has calmed down and doesn’t get so excited (to an extent) about everything and he is less naïve to the world but he still is in a lot of ways. He thinks that Mickey will share one of his girlfriends with him and that you can still learn everything about life in books. I think that Mickey’s attitude when he can’t think of the right things to say to Linda is meant to be because of his social background; Edward knows what to say even when he hasn’t experienced it first hand. An example of this is when Mickey says that he want to go out with Linda but he can’t find the words but Edward’s read it in books so he tells Mickey what to say, this is just another example of the social unfairness picked out by Blood Brothers. However they would both look inept from the outlooks of different classes.
There is a song before the first time they meet when they are fourteen in which they both say that they want to be the other, this also happens just after Edward moves away; they sing about the good qualities of the other. If Russell was writing this musical about social class then a song is a very good way for him to be able to list the all the good points about each class. I think that Russell was showing in these songs that neither class is better than the other and while it isn’t strongly shown the only reason that middle class is the one that usually comes out on top is because of money. Music is something that nearly everyone enjoys and is widely popular in every class so it’s a very good way to be impartial to everyone.
When the two main characters reach eighteen their relationship towards each other dramatically changes; this is a very important scene because it’s the beginning of the end of the play and where the relationship of the characters completely changes. In this scene before Edward comes in there is an important song with ‘Mr Lyons’ as the employer and ‘Miss Jones’ as an everyday working class employee. The song keeps on saying that the redundancies are only because of a sign of the times, this could that mean that in the future Russell thinks things will be different, better perhaps or worse if something isn’t done. The other thing that strikes me is that the middle class man is in work but the working class woman isn’t, which just indicates how our society is structured and maybe even talking about sexism.
They’re eighteen years old and adults, perhaps Russell just thought that eighteen was a suitable age for their relationship to take this turn but I think it could have been because they’re adults and Russell wanted to show that as adults social class defines almost everything about people, even their friends. In the scene where Mickey and Edward get into a heated argument there’s a lot of stage direction, the unwillingness of Mickey to respond to Edward seems to be because he’s frustrated. This is where I think Russell puts one of his key opinions in. Russell seems very frustrated that a lot of working class people have to get through all this hardship and the middle classes don’t understand, they just think they can throw money at it and it will make it better. When Mickey refuses Edwards money it’s not because he doesn’t want the money but he wants to earn it himself and Edward doesn’t understand that to Mickey it’s his pride that’s more important than money. In an interview Russell talked about a sense of satisfaction he had when he’d earnt enough money to go to college because he knew that his achievements were his and his alone. So when Edward tries to hand Mickey the money is an important part and Mickey should throw the money away forcefully and say with almost an aggressive tone “No I don’t want your money, stuff it!”
The end scene should be made very dramatic; the relationship between the two characters has become the most emotional, ending in the death of both Mickey and Edward. The way in which I would direct this scene would be to give a confused feeling, so when Mickey comes in and points the gun at Edward there would be bright lights and smoke to show this air of confusion. Then when Mrs Johnston reveals that they are actually brothers I would have it suddenly disappear as the truth is revealed to them. Finally a red light filling the back of the stage (to symbolise the blood), should appear; and be kept on until the final curtain.
The language used in the play is modern and inclusive because that’s how people talk. But there is obviously a difference between the way Edward talks and the way Mickey talks but that’s because of the way that they have been brought up and the people who they have been brought up with. If Russell was writing this to show how social class affects people’s lives then he would have written it for everyone so it’s important that he puts accents on and not BBC type English because not only would it sound unnatural but people would not be able to relate to it. As a director it would important to make sure that the actors are aware of this.
Why has Russell set Blood Brothers in Liverpool? I think that has an important link to my earlier comment that authors generally write about themselves; because Russell grew up in Liverpool and around the age of fourteen he moved to Rainford which is in the country. When Russell moved to Rainford he enjoyed it a lot more than when he was in Liverpool because the people were nicer. Normally middle class people live in the country; does that make people nicer if they’re middle class? Also Mickey’s place of work when he’s eighteen is a box factory and he tells Edward how he used to get scared that he’d spend the rest of his life in there. In the introduction to Blood Brothers Russell talked about when he was at school, and on a school trip to a bottle making factory he got scared that that was what was going to do for the rest of his life. So there are quite a few different incidents that happen in Blood Brothers which can be related to Russell’s own life, what I would like to know is whether those incidents were irrelevant to the main theme of the story line or were there more things in the story from Russell’s own life? I am beginning to think that Russell intended the play to be about the differences in social class not only because it seems fairly obvious but in the introduction and the short auto-biography he states that:
[…] how could I, a kid from ‘D’ stream, a piece of factory
fodder, ever change the course that my life was set on?
Really I think that’s all the evidence needed to show that Willy Russell wrote Blood Brothers about social class and how it dictates people’s lives. That might have strayed off the point of why is it set in Liverpool but it was an important point in itself. It doesn’t seem too important that the play’s set in Liverpool because the theme isn’t really altered by which city it’s set in, it just has to be set in a city because I think it’s what Russell would have wanted and I don’t think it’s right to stray too far from his play. Also most people live in cities so it’s relevant to more people. Cities are a more obvious place of social differentiation because there are so many people of different backgrounds living close together and in this case it’s the differences and discriminations between people in different social classes. The way that Russell has written that is like a list, it is listing all the things that he is and he is working class so that is a list of all the things that people associate with working class. He also makes an important point about the self fulfilling prophecy that takes place in working classes they are told what they’re life is going to be like so they accept it and live their life like that, Mickey accepts that at first but then rejects it as he realises the all injustices he ‘s been dealt.
Final point before I conclude is on superstition which is very evident throughout the play, in such scenes as: When Mrs Johnston tells Mrs Lyons not to put new shoes on the table. The key part of superstition in this whole play is a quote from one of the last things the narrator says.
“And do we blame superstition for what came to pass? Or could
it be what we, the English have to come to know as class?”
I think that Russell is saying it isn’t superstition, it isn’t a radio show you can turn off or on, it isn’t an old film with Marilyn Monroe, this is real life. The only reason for the events in Blood Brothers is because of class and we know it, don’t try and pretend it’s something else. In my opinion I would say that the whole relationship progression between Mickey and Edward is meant to symbolise Willy Russell’s frustration at the huge class divide which still exists today. The ‘we’ in that quote suggests that it’s our problem; it makes it more personal and brings the whole theme of social injustices home to the audience. The ‘we’ also appears in the second sentence of that quote, it occurs just before a comma it makes you take a breath and you realise it is us. Then there are the words “, the English have come to know as class” I think that is saying that all these discriminations and injustices that happen as a result of what we call class, is just what we call it and other countries have different names for it, such as the cast system in India.
To conclude: Willy Russell’s musical Blood Brothers has a very well thought out plot and seems to reach deep into the ethics of social life exposing them for what they really are. I hope any director would pick up on this and make it very clear to the audience; otherwise the entire point of the story is lost.
At the start I didn’t think that this was a very good play but the more I read into the story line the better it became and a lot of Willy Russell’s frustrations about social divide came off in my own feelings about the characters and their lives.
