When You Can't Fight Fate: Blood Brothers

The inevitability of paying the price for a decision which forebodes disastrous consequences pervades the theme and sustains the tension of Blood Brothers.

As a born and bred scouser who hungrily devoured the premier production in Liverpool in 1983 when Barbara Dixon played Mrs Johnstone, mother of the ill-fated twins, it was gratifying to see creator Willy Russell’s timeless masterpiece still blowing audiences away four decades later.

Blood Brothers captures the gritty story of Mickey and Eddie, babies separated at birth because their poor and struggling single mother of seven, deserted by her worthless husband, had too many mouths to feed.

The pact she made to give one of them (Eddie) away to a childless mother sets the boys on paths in which their lives could not be more polarized.

The theme of social class is tangible everywhere. We see Mickey and his hungry siblings survive by their wits on streets plastered with graffiti, forever getting into scrapes with the police.

Home is a permanently overcrowded terraced house which is later declared unfit for human habitation where their mother, always hoping for better a better life for them all, lives on the ‘never-never’ - ordering furniture and goods from catalogues on credit she knows she can never repay.

Just a neighborhood away - but worlds apart materially and financially - Eddie is brought up in affluence without wanting for anything. How the plot of this timeless masterpiece and musical evolves is both gripping and heartbreaking.

The cast’s combined talent is worthy of the production’s continued standing ovations. Niki Colwell Evans, deservedly named “the songbird” (X-Factor (2007) is excellent and her rendition of Marilyn Monroe is electrifying.

Star performer, Welsh actor Sean Jones as Liverpool lad Mickey, has toured with Blood Brothers for two decades. Truly outstanding in every nuance of his evolving role we follow with bated breath - and Liverpool humour belly laughs - his journey from boyhood to manhood.

Joe Sleight returns to the cast as a strong and credible Eddie. Also worthy of mention are born and bred Liverpudlian Timothy Lucas as Mickey’s older and reckless brother Sammy, the fabulous Gemma Brodrick as Linda - and Scott Anson as The Narrator.

Directed by Bob Tomson and the late Bill Kenwright, the production (four accolades for Best Musical in London, seven Tony Award nominations on Broadway) boasts knockout sets.

A dominant force of the timeless masterpiece is the towering presence of the iconic Royal Liver Building clocking the days, months, and years to the inescapable conclusion pre-determined by the forces of nature. Compulsive watching it is exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.