The Changes in Mickey and Edwards Relationship :: Blood Brothers Willy Russell Essays

The Changes in Mickey and Edward's Relationship There! In a flash the whole course of your life has been decided, will you succeed or will you fail? It is not for you to decide, you have had your freedom taken away from you and you will never realise until the last moments of your frustrated, or enjoyable life and by then it will be too late. This is Blood Brothers in a nutshell; a musical which tears through the walls of social ethics exposing the obvious truth, injustice and social inequalities roam our Country and the devices which Russell uses brings this to the audience in a mixture of speech, song and show. In this piece of drama coursework focusing on Blood Brothers there will be several different aspects of the play which will be focused on. The characters, particularly the main two, will be the fundamental building blocks of answering the question because once we know everything about Mickey and Edward we can then go on to look at their relationship changes. Another important issue to look at is the dramatic devices used by the director and how this will link to the structure of the play. Also it would be useful to look at the language used as this can give a good insight into the author and on this note, reach into the ideas and themes of the play so we will have a good view of Willy Russell's intentions. Finally looking at the setting to see more of Russell's intentions and the cultural context; trying to see what kind of audience Russell had in mind. Looking at Russell's intentions I have come up with three main view points: He just wrote this play as you see it at face value; it could be an ironic storyline that they are blood brothers but also real brothers, the fact that it's a musical is purely for show and entertainment. The evidence for this point of view is one of Russell's interviews about Educating Rita, where Rita cuts off Frank's hair; it's supposed to be alluding to the cutting of Sampson's hair by Delilah. In fact the real reason was it was supposed to be a comic gag. So then how do we know that Russell wrote the play for the general audience and not for the commentators and critics, maybe he wrote the play to be enjoyed; rather than for people to debate the social meanings but just watch a musical? An alternative view point would suggest that Russell saw this as way to show how difficult it is to be successful or just to lead a good