
Revision
Blood
Brothers
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Themes
 Class divide
 Family
 Growing up
 Superstition and Fate
 Hopes and Dreams
 Nature versus Nurture
 Love and Marriage
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Characters


Mrs Johnstone
Mickey
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Other children including Sammy
and Donna-Marie
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Linda
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Mrs Lyons
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Mr Lyons
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Edward Lyons
Narrator
Chorus to play minor roles such as
Miss Jones
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Motifs
 Marilyn Monroe
 Guns - toy and
real
 The idea of games
 Dancing
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Techniques
 Parallel scenes to bring out class differences
 Use of key episodes to give a flavour of life,
since play covers a long period of time
 Use of songs
 Use of motifs
 Narrator and chorus
 Flashback – starts with final scene
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Language
 The working class characters speak in Liverpool
dialect, which makes them sound natural, warm
and likeable.
 The middle class characters speak in standard
English, with Received Pronunciation. This is a
cause of humour when the boys first meet.
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The Role of the Narrator
 Comments on the action
 Tells the story and involves the audience
 Links episodes together
 Warns of danger by appearing on stage at crucial times
 Points out themes
 Asks audience questions
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What do the songs add to the Play?
 Link scenes and draw parallels
 Remind the audience of key themes
 Link the two halves of the play by using some of the
same words / tunes, such as ‘Easy Terms’
 Mood and atmosphere
 Humour and pathos
 Fill in parts of the plot
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The tragic outcome is inevitable from the very
start. Discuss.
 Theme of Superstition and Fate
 Starting with final scene
 Continual warnings from the narrator
 The Marilyn Monroe motif
 The gun motif
 Nurture – Johnstone family are in trouble from the start. E.g.
Sammy’s behaviour and Mrs Johnstone’s fears for Mickey
 Class divide
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To what extent do you feel sympathy
for Mrs Johnstone?
 At the start, very little: ‘a stone in place of a heart’, but
gradually, as the story unfolds, we feel much more:
 Husband walks out leaving her with little money
 Mrs Lyons pushes her into it
 She does it ‘for the best’
 She’s a loving mother to all her children
 She stays cheerful and makes the best of things
 But do we also feel she could have controlled her children
better, been harder on them?
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What does this play have to say about
class?
 The class divide is unfair
 Russell shows that two people with identical DNA can
be so different in what they achieve because working
class people were denied the chances to develop
 Russell poses the question: ‘could it be what we, the
English, have come to know as class?’
 Money can’t buy love but it can buy power.
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Now you try…
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What has this play to say about mother / child relationships?
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How is the theme of love presented? You may consider family love,
romantic love and married love.
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How far do you think Russell presents the working class characters
in a more favourable light than the middle class characters?
Can you think of any other questions?
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