8/28/2023 0 Comments Willy russell blood brothers book![]() “The first ever incarnation of Blood Brothers was as a play, written for Merseyside Young Peoples Theatre whose founder and director, Paul Harman, had an office across the corridor from me and was always badgering me to write something for this terrific company of his. The Broadway run was followed by extensive US tours and continues to be regularly seen in productions throughout the world, with recent versions staged in Japan, Korea, South Africa, Australia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Argentina and Turkey. In 1993, Blood Brothers opened on Broadway, playing at the Music Box Theatre for two years and garnering Drama Desk Award and multiple Tony Award Nominations. In 1988 the musical was revived in the West End, opening at the Albery Theatre and then the Phoenix, running for twenty four years, becoming one of the longest-running musicals in West End history. An extensive UK tour followed and the first of Blood Brother’s many international productions began to appear. The work won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical as well as the Award for Best Actress in a Musical for its star, Barbara Dickson. The only thing left for me to do was to sit down and write it.”īlood Brothers first opened at Liverpool Playhouse on January 8th 1983 and after a hugely successful run in its home city transferred to the West End and a six month run at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue. And one of those twins was going to be given away. And although she didn’t know it yet, I knew that this time she was expecting twins. I knew that this woman was pregnant again. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.īut in my mind’s eye this mother was a contemporary character in a contemporary urban setting, walking along the side of the East Lancs Road, past the Sparrow Hall flats and the rows of council houses, a gaggle of kids straggling along beside her. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, Johnstone – like the mother in the nursery rhyme: I was walking along one day, lifted my foot and by the time I’d put it down again I had the plot, narrative, the central characters, the superstition and the knowledge that it had to be a musical. It was one of those rare ideas that came almost fully formed, the story just dropping into my head. Mr Russell writes with knowledgeable venom about a world where Beethoven Underpass leads to Wagner Walkway and where anyone who doesn’t join Weight Watchers or the Ramblers Club is regarded as a social deviant.“I’d had the idea for Blood Brothers for some years before I had the courage to try and write it. With the mid life hero torn between the security of married life in a dormer bungalow on a northern housing estate and dreams of being a rucksacked super tramp. The play is not only funny, it is also moving.’ Michael Coveney, Financial Times One for the Road ‘starts… This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. The note on the kitchen table reads ‘Gone to Greece back in two weeks.’ ‘It is a simple and brilliant idea… Shirley Valentine, 42 year old put upon mother and housewife, leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband, packs her bags and heads for the sun. A fourth, that it is simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious: a hilarious social documentary a fairy tale with a quizzical, half happy ending.’ Sunday Times A third, that it is a cross between Pygmalion and Lucky Jim. I have rarely seen a show that combined such warmth and such bleakness.’The Times Stags and Hens ‘takes place in the gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other to hold their stag and hen parties…Ī bleakly funny and perceptive study of working class misogyny, puritanism and waste’ Guardian Educating Rita: ‘one way of describing Educating Rita would be to say that it was about the meaning of education…Īnother would be to say that it was about the meaning of life. Hilarious, upsetting and somewhat seditious.’ Variety Our Day Out is about a school coach trip, an exuberant celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up ‘a Dickensian fairytale… Plays1: Breezeblock Park, Our Day Out, Stags and Hens, Educating Ritaīreezeblock Park is set on a northern council estate and takes a look at the suffocating effect of possessions and possessiveness: ‘Trenchantly observed… ![]()
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