Leeds Citizen and daughter go see Blood Brothers at The Grand …
This was just us – me and my daughter CC – chatting at the table after we got home from seeing Blood Brothers (“CC”? … Child of Citizen I’m guessing. Ed.)
LC: What did you think of the ovation?
CC: Sorry?
LC: Well, were you a bit surprised when everybody leapt to their feet?
CC: You did too!
LC: I know, but if I’d stayed sat down with a forest of people whooping and bravoing around and above, it would have felt like I was making a point when I wouldn’t have been, because I enjoyed it.
CC: Maybe it was a different kind of standing ovation than normal.
LC: How so?
CC: Well my mother-in-law goes and sees Blood Brothers at least once a year, and she’s got friends who go once a month – and it’s been running pretty much uninterrupted since Mrs T announced the Poll Tax. It’s apparently a culty thing. So there’s probably other kinds of stuff going on between cast, audience and show. Unspoken stuff.
LC: Do you want to tell them what happens?
CC: Who?
LC: The people reading this.
CC: Basically, there are these twins born to a poor working-class mum in Liverpool who’s up to her neck with the never-never and struggling with the brood she’s got already. So she hands one of the twins over to the barren posh woman she’s charring for. The boys grow up, become friends and do a blood brother pact, even though they come from different sides of the tracks and don’t know they’re related. The musical’s the story of their friendship set against a brooding backdrop of superstition and class divide.
LC: Nice. I blame that narrator for the brooding. He was like a Scouse soothsayer in a sharp suit. Just when the cast were having a laugh or falling in love he’d appear at the window of a run-down terrace and stare down moodily, and you thought “Uh, oh! Here’s trouble … again”. It’s not all dark, though, is it?
CC: I didn’t say it was. There’s some very funny bits. The working class scallywag brother Mickey got all the best lines. He was brilliant.
LC: While the middle-class brother Edward and his family were neurotic and wooden. I couldn’t warm to him, one of those public-school boys in duffel-coat and cavalry twill that are always stealing the hearts of feisty young working-class girls with their smooth-tongued smarm.
CC: Just like life really.
LC: You cried!
CC: I did! What made me cry was that it’s still so relevant. To tell you the truth I was struggling with the Casio keyboard sound which I thought was going to wind me up throughout. But the story got to me. I’ve been reading Esther Waters and deep down nothing has changed. It’s the people with money that get the opportunities. And the poor get notten.
LC: See, I got it wrong. I thought it was about fate and superstition. Everybody kept crossing their fingers behind their backs to stop bad stuff. The curse! The twins’ curse! And then, right at the end, when the tragedy has unfolded, the narrator comes on and says “And do we blame superstition for what came to pass? Or could it be what we have come to know as class?”
CC: That was you told.
LC: It was.
CC: Tell you what. I’d never seen a musical in the theatre before. I really enjoyed it. Some of the acting and singing was great – Micky, the real mum from the Nolans and the narrator especially. Did you notice she seemed genuinely upset at the end? And the songs grew on me. And when everyone was singing together it was brilliant. And I cried.
LC: You did. You fancy going to another one?
CC: You mean the Dolly Parton one? Yes, please.