In Blood Brothers what techniques does Willy Russell use to attract and maintain audience interest?

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In Blood Brothers what techniques does Willy Russell use to attract and maintain audience interest?  

The play dates back to the early 1980’s where the original production by Willy Russell was written as a school play and presented in 1981. The play is not a musical as some may think yet in Russell’s own words, ‘a play with music.’ The play is set up differently compared to many ‘normal’ plays as it is divided into just two acts and the play starts with the ending at the beginning giving it an unusual and uncanny feel. The play involves two women, one who has many children, Mrs Johnson and the other who is struggling to even get pregnant, Mrs Lyons. When Mrs Johnson takes up a cleaning job for Mrs Lyons, Mrs Johnson finds out she is pregnant and Mrs Lyons insists that she is to sell one of the twins to her – and no one would ever know; unbeknown to them everything would go wrong.

When it comes to think about how Russell maintains audience interest the first major and somewhat bewildering part of the play is the songs as they show a lot of emotion and the repetition of the narrator always being around uses imagery to show that there is always something on the two women’s conscience. However, Mrs Johnson is to some extent obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and she is mentioned many times in the play – mainly by Mrs Johnson in the songs she sings. “He told me I was sexier than Marilyn Monroe” this shows how Mrs Johnson was intrigued by Monroe’s life and she aspired to be like her. In actual fact observing both Mrs Johnson’s life and that of Monroe there are similarities in the sense of the rise and fall of both of their lives – they both had mountains to overcome. This idea is repeated many times through the play and Monroe is referred to many times, the audience can make assumptions and connections between Mrs Johnson and Monroe thus they are captivated to continue reading the play to find why Monroe is used and how important her life is to the play.  Audience interest would be maintained with this use of character differences because the different classes who are watching the play can all associate with a different person within the play.

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From above we can tell that this play is in no way simple as it has a mixture of characters within the Blood Brothers play; there is a clear social hierarchy. Mickey is from the working class and his vocabulary is not as developed as Edwards’ and this is shown in the play when Mickey says, “D' they call y' Eddie?” Mickey uses slang so that the audience can tell he is from a less wealthy family; his words are also abbreviated i.e. ‘D’ and ‘y’’. This helps the audience to relate to Mickey if they come from that ...

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