How to Tell You It's Not True

With formerly spicy Mel C wowing audiences in the London cast of Blood Brothers, this seemed like a good opportunity for a little reflective review on the show. So here it is:

The book’s the thing. If that Funny Boy from Denmark had ever gotten around to writing a musical I’m sure he would have agreed. With musicals, people tend to get it backwards. People think that the hardest job must be the composer’s because writing music is a special skill. Lyric-writing is second because that’s all to do with writing rhymes. But the book must be the easiest because that’s just the talking bits. Actually it should be the other way around. The book is by far the most important part of any musical. The only trouble is that there are so few good ‘uns. Blood Brothers may not have a spectacular set or a movie tie-in or a symphonic score or even a happy ending. But it does have a terrific book and that’s more than enough.

Willy Russell had a wonderful idea for a story. Twin brothers are separated at birth and one is brought up working class, the other middle class. By chance they become best friends (“blood brothers”) in childhood. But their lives slowly drift apart until one fateful day they learn the truth about themselves. It's a great idea full of dramatic potential - mothers and sons, rites of passage, social divides - all good, juicy stuff. So what's the problem? Well, it's also absurd and relies on a series of implausible circumstances. Like a woman's husband conveniently being away “on business” for nine months so that she can fake a pregnancy with a cushion up her jumper. Like the posh "mother" moving home and the real working-class mother getting re-housed by the council in exactly the same area. Like the working-class son ending up being employed by and subsequently laid off by his posh “father”. The contrivances go on. So this is Willy Russell’s problem: great dramatic idea but laughably implausible storyline.

How does he solve this problem? Well he pretty much sorts it out in the first few words:

“So did y’ hear the story of the Johnstone twins?
As like each other as two new pins,
Of one womb born, on the self same day,
How one was kept and one given away?”

That’s the Narrator speaking. Usually shoehorning a narrator into your drama is a shorthand way of telling the story. They keep the audience up-to-date with the who’s who and what’s what. But not this Narrator. In fact, as far as storytelling goes, that opening plot summary is about the only thing this Narrator actually does. After that he only pops up to play bit parts or sing a little fatalistic commentary every now and then in a moderately rocky style (“You know the devil’s got your number”). The point is that The Narrator isn’t there to narrate; he’s really there to remind us that it’s a narrative. Indeed that becomes a kind of repeated theme of the whole piece:

"Tell me it’s not true
Say it’s just a story"

Exactly so. Blood Brothers is just a story, a kind of modern-day folk tale. You can hear it in the language of those opening lines. Yes, it’s just a story so, yes, there will plot contrivances but that’s kind of the point, so please go with it. The Narrator provides a smart and bold solution to the problem of an implausible narrative. In fact turning your biggest problem into a prominent feature is really quite brilliant. Not the sort of brilliance that will get noticed in the way that a beautiful melody or clever couplet would but, in the final analysis, far more important than either of those things.

Sometimes Blood Brothers is described as a play with music as opposed to a musical, as if the songs are incidental. Maybe that’s because the story is very strong and, to some ears, the songs are a bit basic. It’s true that Willy Russell is no Lionel Bart but, as a dramatic songwriter, he’s still very effective. Here’s a seven-year-old boy who’s bored out of his brain because his best friend has left and he’s got no-one else to play with:

“No kids out on the street today,
You could be living on the moon.
Maybe everybody’s packed their bags and moved away,
Gonna be a long, long, lo-o-o-ong
Sunday Afternoon.”

The music is slow and ponderous. You can feel the boy’s boredom being stretched out in those repeated “longs” and that melisma on the final one, like a little musical yawn, is a perfect bit of characterisation through song. This isn’t flashy but, as musical writing goes, the music and lyrics are perfectly in tune with the dramatic moment. That’s a rare achievement in most musicals.

In the end Blood Brothers is a drama told through song; take the songs away and you’d have a less effective drama. That not only makes it a musical but a great one at that. It’s 21 years and counting in the West End and its simple but flexible staging will, I’m sure, guarantee it a long life in schools and am-dram clubs up and down the country. Musical or otherwise, it seems there’s always an audience for a family tragedy. Just ask Hamlet.