How does Willy Russell use dramatic techniques to highlight the main
ideas and themes in Blood Brothers?
To achieve an A, you must show analytical and interpretative skills
when evaluating:
• the effects of character and action
• the effects of dramatic devices or structures
• the layers of meaning in language, ideas and themes
• the social and historical setting or cultural context or literary tradition

Introduce the play, giving a brief summary of the plot and main characters.

Where is the play set? Why would this be a good place to set a play about the effects of economic hardships in
the 1980s?

Comment in detail on the genre of Tragedy – what other plays is it similar to? How does the prologue
contribute to this? What effect does it have on us as an audience?

Comment on the introduction of the two women. How are they similar and different? What does Russell want
us to understand about the women at this point? How do we react to each at this point? Look at the language
used by both women. Comment on motifs used and what we associate with them.

How does the song at this point help us to understand these parallels?

What role does the dialogue on superstitions have in the play? What does it highlight for the audience?

Look at the role of the narrator. What role does he have in the play? How do we feel when he is introduced?
Link this to the genre of tragedy.

What effect do the stock characters (The milkman, catalogue man, gynaecologist) play in this feeling of
inevitability? Why do you think Russell wants us as an audience to be so involved in the action?

Why does Russell use adult actors as children and watch them grow up? What does this add to our theatrical
experience?

Look at the parallels between the two boys. How do songs highlight this? Look also at staging at this point.
How does Russell use counterpoint and lighting to draw parallels between the two boys. Why does he do
this?

At what point does Willy Russell highlight the movement away from the boys’ lives running in parallel? What
factors create this shift? How is the economic hardship of the 1980s shown in the play at this point? What
might Russell be trying to tell us about opportunities available to all?

How does Willy Russell emphasise the impending tragedy towards the end of the play? Look at the Robbery
and dramatic techniques used here.

The climax of the play comes with the shooting. How is this dramatised by Russell. What makes it so hardhitting and emotive?

Why does the play’s dénouement end with a song? What effect does it have on the reader? What do the
melody and the lyrics draw us back to?