Mrs Johnston is a working mother who can barely afford to feed her seven children, and is distraught when she discovers she is expecting twins. Mrs Johnston receives a proposition from her upper class employer; Mrs Lyons, who offers to buy one of the twins and pass them off as her own, to her husband who is away? As Mrs Johnston is short of money she reluctantly accepts the offer and when the babies are born Mrs Lyons picks her twin and brings him up as her own. As time passes on, Mrs Lyons becomes over possessive of the baby and sacks Mrs Johnston, to keep the biological mother from getting emotionally attached to him.
Years pass and the two mothers try very hard to keep the twins from discovering the truth, inevitably they meet and develop a strong friendship, they soon become ‘blood brothers’. Mrs Lyons finds out and is sent into hysteria. This leads her to take her son Eddie to live in the countryside to get away from the truth. However, she is unaware that Mrs Johnston is re-housed to live in the same area with the other twin her son Mickey. The twins meet again this time there is a third person involved, Linda, who is Mickey’s friend.
Some years go by and the storey continues when the threesome are 18 years old and as Eddie has been brought up by a wealthy family he moves to go to university and this proves hard on his friendship with Mickey. Mickey gets a job in a factory and he and Linda became an item. Linda soon gets pregnant and Mickey loses his job. When Eddie returns from university, Mickey resents his friend’s ‘easy’ life and they fall out. Mickey then commits a serious crime in order to get some money to support Linda and baby, but he gets caught and sentenced to six years in jail.
He becomes depressed and dependant on pills. Eddie meanwhile has become a councillor. He begins to see Linda but when Mickey is released from prison he finds out his best friend and his wife betrayed him. Mickey accidentally kills both himself and his brother just after finding out the truth. This play had many underlying themes, including: love, hate, betrayal, teenage pregnancy, lies and differences between classes. The play was performed in a miraculously which gripped the audience which felt enabled them to be involved with the characters’ emotions.
The play was amazing and intriguing until the end The title ‘Blood brothers’ is very relevant as it underlies the main theme of the play. This becomes more apparent, having seen the play. In my opinion the performers were absolutely fantastic. The best character was Mickey played by Stephen Palfreman. He seemed in his late 30’s or early 40’s and he played the character very well. Right from the seven year old with the spitting and bad words, to when Mickey died. The play wouldn’t have been the same without him.
He was able to express, hatred and many other emotions to the play very well. The other performers across well in their roles. All the performers had very good voice projection; good timing and they made the most believable characters I have ever seen. The setting of some plays may not always be essential to understanding the content but in this play I thought the setting contributed well as did the lighting. The setting enhanced emotions that have been expressed by the performers. For example, standing nest to a broken wall, you feel negative, but by a brand new wall you feel positive.
The performers did not look like they had any problems with the set. If the set was difficult to move around on, the cast would not have come across as well. The set added enjoyment to the play as it created a picture for the audience to relate to in their minds. In conclusion , I believe the play was amazing the performers, the set, the lighting, props and make up, came together to provide an amazing play I would defiantly I would defiantly go and see this play again and believe it will continue to draw in audiences from all backgrounds.
