“And what are you doing?”
Eddie replies “Adolph Hitler”
The policewoman then asks “Whats your name son?”
Eddie “Waiting for the ninety two bus”
This is very amusing for the audience which realises that Eddie is copying the language of Mickey and Linda in completely the wrong context. We experience incongruity when Edward and his mother argue and Eddie says:
“You are a fuckoff!"
He has picked up this bad language from his new friends and it sounds totally out of place with his surroundings, which is what makes the audience laugh, as it is completely unexpected. However, “Blood Brothers” is not a straightforward comedy. There are elements of sadness, happiness, frustration and pain in the play. We experience conflict which balances the humour. There are examples of physical, verbal, overt and covert conflict throughout the play. The most notable example of physical conflict is when Mickey shoots Eddie. The audience is reminded of the superstition that the brothers would die if they were to find out they were in fact twins, when Mrs Lyons comments:
“They say… they say that if either twin learns that they are one of a pair then they will both die immediately”
This builds dramatic tension and then this tension dies away after the climax of the shooting. The verbal conflict in the play takes place mainly between the female characters. Dramatic irony is a key factor in this play. The best example is when Mickey takes Edward home for the first time saying: "Mam, this is my blood brother." Mickey and Eddie are unaware the full impact of this statement, unlike the audience. The audience begin to feel involved with the play and the suspense builds because they know Mrs. Lyons keeps the biggest secret of all.
“Blood Brothers” is made up of fairly simple storylines: There is nothing too difficult to understand and it helps the audience to stay focused and involved with the action. The varied scene changes in the play work to keep the audience captivated, as does the upbeat, fast pace of the play. Music could create a dramatic atmosphere and keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Willy Russell is very successful in sustaining the audiences attention and involving them with his characters due to the effectiveness of his writing. The plotlines are simple yet captivating, and the characterisation is vivid and imaginative. It is easy to empathise with the emotions experienced by his characters which makes us care about what happens to them. Russell is also highly successful in building dramatic tension and the conclusion of the play is both shocking and thought provoking.
The development of characters is fascinating: Mickey is undoubtedly one of the main characters in the play-he is also a victim. He has a twin brother of which he has no knowledge of until a few seconds before they are both killed. He could also be portrayed as a victim because of his upbringing in a lower class household where he had little chance of educational success. Peer pressure led him to do dubious things so that, for example, he could treat Linda to a night out…. a symptom of the economic depression in the 1980’s. For example Mickey said:
Here’s your stone, you need to throw it through that window right there right?”
Eddie, Mickey’s twin also plays a large part in the play and is also a victim of circumstances. He lives in ignorance of his own brother’s existence and is not brought up by his natural mother. He was deprived of information about his family and background being brought up as an only child who never had a father figure around-although in material terms he did rather well.
One of the main questions that arises in “Blood Brothers” is how much class is to blame for what comes to pass and how much is down to superstition. The suggestion is that poorer people are more superstitious because they have the potential for lots of things to go wrong in their lives and they have to be able to blame this on something. Mickey’s mother reflects such a superstition:
“Oh god, never put shoes on the table Mrs Lyons-you’ll never know what could happen”
Mrs Johnston probably believed that is was fate that led her to have so many children. Mrs Lyons on the other hand doesn’t really believe in fate because very little has ever gone wrong for her. Having persuading Mrs Johnston to give her one of her twins in exchange for money Mrs Lyons soon fires her so that in effect Mrs Johnston loses her child and her job. Mrs Lyons also tells Mrs Johnston that the two twins must never meet or else they will die. Again this is superstitious nonsense, but coupled with the narrator’s reference to “cracked mirrors” and “single magpies” it is fairly suggestive.
“Blood Brothers” is centred on the two twins, Mickey and Eddie who are inextricably linked by birth yet separated by upbringing and background. Although their liking for each other is obvious at first, their contrasting environments force them apart. Tragedy occurs because their upbringing prevents a proper understanding of each other.
The episodic nature of the play allows Willy Russell to concentrate on the degree to which success in life is determined not by innate qualities but by the privileges or disadvantages of our upbringing and background. This pervasive quality is dramatised in the contrasting fortunes of “Blood Brothers”.
The play considers family, education, employment, housing and relationships offering entertainment but also raising concerns to young people today. The play itself is like a ballad: the narrators opening speech is in ballad form, it tells a story, entertains and informs. The events are larger than life and the play has strong formal organisation. The characters and events are realistic but he style of the play frequently reminds us that what we are watching is not real. There are also elements of melodrama: emotion, sensational events and punishment for guilt.
Throughout “Blood Brothers” there are ironic twists; characters say and do things which are intended to produce one effect and in fact have the opposite outcome. For example when Eddie finds Mickey a job in the factory, the outcome is opposite to what Eddie intended.
“Yeh we both work in the same place, but you own the place Mr Lyons”
The play makes a statement about contrasting ways of life, but essentially it demonstrates how class, background and upbringing affect and define the outcomes of people’s lives.
There is a certain inevitability about the way the lives of the Johnston family develop and the difficulties they face trying to change. Mickey says:
“Eddie, we’ve been trying to get moved for five years-you fix it up in five minutes”
In other words, middle class people can make things happen. Eddie has gained confidence (by attending a public school rather than a state school) and Mickey has not. The experience has given Eddie a “leg up” as far as life opportunities are concerned. The Lyons family broadly represent middle class people who appear to have material privileges and life opportunities. Mickey’s family on the other hand demonstrate, at an extreme level, the difficulties faced by large, working-class, single parent families who cannot rise above the poverty and deprivation in which they live.
I think “Blood Brothers” is powerful, moving and thought provoking in the way that it deals with the issues I have tried to consider in this essay.
