Ellis Daker as Eddie, Ray Curran and blood
brother Mickey with Flora Deeley's Linda looking on.
Picture Julie Bywater
Blood Brothers (play version)
Dudley Little Theatre
Netherton Arts Centre
*****
Every so often the theatrical gods look
down kindly and a real stonker of a production comes along – and this is
by far the best I have seen from Dudley by quite a margin.
It even brought a standing ovation, but it was no
more than the cast deserved. Willy Russell’s Liverpool fable of twins
separated at birth was chosen by audiences last year for the 70th
anniversary season, and sets the year off in fine style.
The well-known and much-loved musical seems to
come around about as often as the seasons but the play version, despite
being the original, is harder to find.
Blood Brothers started life as a commission by
Merseyside Young People's Theatre Company for a play to tour around
schools. It has just one song, Marilyn Monroe, and fewer characters than
its descendant, we never see older brother Sammy, for instance, or any
of the other children apart from Linda, for those who know the musical.
Without giving too much of the plot away the play
depends upon six main characters and none disappointed – and everyone
kept up a decent Liverpool accent, which is an essential in this play.
Steve Coussens was suitably sinister and
unemotional as the narrator while Flora Deeley was daft as a brush as
the young Linda who slowly becomes more care-worn as she ages and the
world weighs heavy on her shoulder.
Alison O’Driscoll gives us a Mrs Lyons who starts
as a wealthy, upper middle class wife desperate for a child, but barren.
Rebecca Clee is Mrs Johnson, Mrs Lyons’ cleaner
and a woman with seven kids, struggling on the breadline, who finds
herself pregnant with twins – no prizes for guessing where this is
going.
Despite hardship and now eight kids, she remains
eternally optimistic – and supremely superstitious - while O’Driscoll
slowly guides her character down into a black hole of paranoia.
Then we have the twins in a plot of nature versus
nurture as Ellis Daker’s completely worldly unwise Eddie grows up in a
cossetted life of luxury, private schools, university and a family firm
waiting for him.
Mickey, on the other hand, is street wise,
dangerous and exciting, at least as far as Eddie is concerned when they
meet as strangers. Mickey is everything Eddy wants to be – except Mickey
has nothing.
The rest are good, excellent even, but Ray Curran
is a stand out as Mickey, going from the happy go lucky kid to the young
man battling the world – and losing. His descent into penury and despair
is a message which is unashamedly political, and sadly, 35 years on from
its first tour of Liverpool schools, still relevant.
It is a convincing and moving performance as we
see the cheerful, cheeky child become the empty shell of an adult, with
his life being slowly sucked away.
There is good support from Claire Hetherington
and Tony Stamp filling in as teachers, milkmen, policemen and doctors
while Becky Picken, Andy Miles and Bill Welch provide some lively music
for the opening.
The Netherton stage is not the easiest to work
with but the simple set works well with intelligent lighting from Andy
Rock and it is a fine job from producer/director Lyndsey Ann Parker. To
23-09-17
Roger Clarke
20-09-17
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