Blood Brothers (Methuen Modern Plays) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Willy Russell is a famous dramatist, better known for plays like Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita. He started as a hairdresser and became a well-known play- and musical writer after that.
We are a class from Germany and we have done our A-levels last moth. We read “Blood Brothers” in class 13.
The play “Blood Brothers” is about two boys who get to know each other and become very close friends, without knowing that they are twin-brothers.
Mrs Johnston who already has seven children, expects twins and because she cannot feed them all, she gives one of them to Mrs Lyons who is rich and cannot have any children.
Seven years later Mickey and Eddie get to know each other and become very close friends, even blood brothers. Of course the Mothers are not very happy about this friendship. Both do not want Mickey and Eddie to learn the truth, because Mrs Lyons told Mrs Johnston that both boys will die immediately if they learn that they were parted (Mrs Johnston is very superstitious) and Mrs Lyons want to keep apart from lower social classes.
As time goes by Eddie becomes the boss of a factory he has got from his father and Mickey is still poor and a little worker in this factory.
The conflict between the two grows when Mickey marries Linda (who is a good friend of both) whereas Eddie loves Linda, too.
Mickey is very angry with Eddie, because Eddie has achieved everything and Mickey realizes that his house, his new job and everything he seem to have achieved has been arranged by Eddie.
When Mickey wants to kill Eddie, Mrs Johnston tells the two men that they are brothers. Mrs. Lyons, who has developed a paranoia during the play, wants to kill Mickey, because she is afraid of losing Eddie to Mickey…
We think that the play “Blood Brothers” is a good one because the tension is increasing very fast so that the book never becomes boring.
The book is also exciting and the development of the friendship is very interesting, because you can imagine the situation very well. Willy Russell also shows us the contrast between two living standards. On the one hand Mickey’s family lives on welfare, is poor and he just try to get a job, on the other hand there is Eddie who grows up in a well off family, has much money and who goes to university. It is important in the book that the narrator has a foreshadowing function because he introduces the characters and the conflicts.
One pupil of our class has seen the musical of this play and he likes the musical more than the play because most of the songs are so fantastic and you can never create a mood in a book the way you do it in a musical.
To sum up we can say that the play is very good and we can recommend it to all of you.
We think that it is better not to tell you the ending of the play. If we do this you will lose the fascination and the tension will decrease.
Although there are several opinions if this book has a good or a bad ending, the ending is logical.
Moreover by reading the book the ending becomes more and more foreseeable. We are sure that most of you will be able to tell us the ending before finishing reading the book.
Another point someone of us does not like is that Sammy, Mickey’s and Eddie’s brother, is mentioned in the book very often, but never appears. In the musical, however, Sammy appears on stage.
All in all we only can recommend you “Blood Brothers” because it is very interesting to read even if the ending is a bit foreseeable.
A.R.

Die Musical Version des Stücks ist sehr unterhaltsam und eingängig, sollte aber nicht ohne den original Soundtrack bezogen werden. Der macht nämlich das Stück viel interessanter und überzeugender.
Ein Stern fehlt, weil die Story doch ziemlich eindimensional ist.

We are the WG 13 from the Wirtschaftsgymnasium at Berufskolleg Ahlen des Kreises Warendorf. We read the drama "Blood Brothers" by Willy Russell, and we want to inform you about the drama and how we liked reading it.

Firstly we want you to know the author Willy Russell, who is a famous writer. He was born 1947 in Whiston near Liverpool. At the age of twelve he realized that he wanted to be a writer once. In 1968 he wrote his first play, which is called "Blind Scout", and in 1982 he wrote "Blood Brothers". These are just two of his many dramas and plays.

Secondly we want to inform you about the content of the drama which deals with twins (Mickey and Eddie) who have to grow up aparted from each other. The twins'mother decides before they are born to give one of them (Eddie) away. She is told by Eddie's new mother, Mrs Lyons, never to tell one of them that they are brothers. However, at the age of seven the twins get to know each other, become best friends and blood brothers against the will of their mothers. Some years later Eddie inherits his father's factory whereas his twin Mickey works for him. When Mickey finds out that everything he has is controlled by Eddie he becomes frustrated. They finally find out the truth and both are shot by Mrs Lyons who has become increasingly paranoid.

Thirdly we want to show you our opinions about the drama. As we read the drama in our English lessons, there are different opinions about it. We want to show you different positive and negative opinions of our classmates about the drama.

POSITIVE: We think that the story is very interesting, because Willy Russell uses an unusual way of presenting the plot. We think it is exciting that the brothers are born and die on the same day. We also liked the differences between the brothers, because one grows up in a rich family and the other one grows up in a poor family.
As the drama is normally shown on a stage you can read the stage directions, which show you the feelings of the characters. We like to get information about their feelings, because this makes it easier to understand the characters' behaviour.

We also think that Willy Russell writes his drama in an interesting way, because the plot as it is shown creates tension. Some of us could not stop reading the book. And because the book is very short, you can read it in only three or four hours.
The drama is very easy to read and to understand, because it is written in an easy language. We think that you do not need a dictionary to understand the plot. We like this way of writing, because it is easy to follow the plot.

NEGATIVE: In this drama there is a narrator, who gives important background information, but he disturbs the plot. We think the narrator is unnecessary and could be left out, if there were another way to give the background information.
If we had not read the drama in school we would not have read it, because there is nothing special about the plot. We think there are enough books and films with a similar theme. In our opinion the drama is a little bit boring.
We also think that the characters are a little bit strange in the way they are shown, because they all react in an exaggerated way. For example when the mothers get to know about the friendship of their sons or when the worker finds out that everything is controlled by the other one.

Finally we hope that we could help you with your decision to read or not to read the drama. We think that you have to read the drama yourself to judge for yourself. But we also think that it is better to see the drama on stage and not just to read a drama about a topic this drama deals with.