Blood Brothers

            Blood Brothers is a play written by Willy Russell and is set in Liverpool in the early eighties. The play follows the life of two main characters Mickey Johnstone and Eddie Lyons. .
             The acting was very good and of a high standard, the two actors that stand out the most are the ones who played Mickey and Eddie. This was shown when they were changing ages, because they played it so well and made me really believe that they were changing ages. The actors who become older did this by changing there facial expressions, also by the way they walked and their general body language, the way their voices changed as they got older having a high voice when they were younger and having a deeper voice when they were older and the way they generally talked and the clothes that they wore. The most outstanding character I feel is Mickey because his character is funny and he kept the play alive.
             I felt the technical side of things was very good. The thing that I thought worked best was having the same set in the first half of the play when the actors just brought on small items to change the area that they were in. Then in the second half when both families moved house, the whole set was changed in the interval and then the actors again brought on small items to change the setting of where they were. I read the book before seeing the performance and didn't know how they would achieve this.
             In Blood Brothers the characters fall into two stereotypical groups: the working class Johnstones and their associates, and the middle class Lyons. In the play we experience disagreement when Eddie and his mother argue. He has learnt this bad language from his new friends and it sounds totally out of place, which is what makes the audience laugh, as it is completely unexpected. The verbal conflict in the play takes place mainly between the female characters. An example of this is when Mrs. Lyons goes in to Mrs. Johnstones house and they argue.