REVIEW: Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, until Sat *****

Vivienne Carlyle’s Mrs Johnstone and Sean Jones’s Mickey in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Jack Merriman

WILLY Russell’s tragi-comic Liverpool musical is visiting York for a remarkable tenth time since 1996. No show can rival that record, not even fellow regulars The Rocky Horror Show or Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.

Ticket demand is as high as ever: Monday’s press night was packed to the gills, opening a week’s run that accommodates three rather than the routine two matinees (Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday).

Should you somehow still be a Blood Brothers virgin, make sure to initiate yourself in Russell’s modern-day Jacobean tragedy on its first York outing since 2022, when your reviewer considered the combination of Niki Evans’s Mrs Johnstone, Sean Jones’s Mickey, in his “last ever tour”, Joel Benedict’s Eddie, Carly Burns’s Linda and Robbie Scotcher’s Narrator to be “better than ever”.

The 2025 leads are more than a match, especially Scottish actress Vivienne Carlyle’s Mrs Johnston, with a singing voice to rival Annie Lennox, and Sean Keany’s tall, gaunt grim reaper of an Irish-accented Narrator. Sean Jones, meanwhile, has still not left the building – was he taking the Mickey when he said 2022‘s tour would be the final curtain after 23 years on and off in Blood Brothers’ baggy green jumper and short trousers?! – but why would he leave a role he has made his own?  

At 54, Jones continues to pour blood, sweat and tears into his combustible combination of bouncy comic timing [as seen each winter in his daft lad role in the Florian Pavilion, New Brighton panto too] and heartrending pathos on Mickey’s doomed path from skip to slouch to slump, from cheeky, boundlessly energetic child to lovelorn, tongue-tied teen, to crushed, enervated adult, broken on the wheel of anti-depressants and redundancy.

Impresario and producer Bill Kenwright – who had asked Jones to return to the role in 2022 – has passed away since that tour but the 2025 production still carries his stamp, credited as co-director with Bob Tomson, the team that brought Russell’s  Blood Brothers to its emotional heights with gold standard production values to boot.

Vivienne Carlyle first worked with Kenwright and Tomson in 2006, playing Mrs Lyons and understudying Mrs J at the Phoenix Theatre in London, later appearing as Mrs Lyons at the Grand Opera House on tour in 2008, and she now returns to Mrs J after a 12-year gap, bringing scabrous Scouse humour, love, fierce passion, desperate resilience and guilty pain to the secret-burdened Catholic mother at the heart of Russell’s1983 cautionary tale of twin brothers separated at birth and cursed by a fateful superstition that if either should discover the other’s existence, they will die instantly.

Already struggling with too many children on an impoverished Liverpool estate and deserted by her wastrel husband, Mrs J’s budget on the never-never means she can only “afford” one child more, not two, and so cleaner Mrs J rashly enters a pact with her employer, a travelling salesman’s barren wife, Mrs Lyons (Sarah Jane Buckley), to give her the choice of the twins.

Whereupon, seen from the age of seven upwards, Jones’s scally urchin Mickey and Joe Sleight’s initially naïve, then scholarly Eddie are divided by the class divide that Russell lambasts, but their paths are destined to keep crossing, as fate plays its hand as much as social circumstance, turning their “blood brother” bond in adolescent rites of passage to adult separation.

Ever present in the shadows on Andy Walmsley’s set of house frontages, a mezzanine level and backdrops of Liverpool Liver Building skyscraper and the verdant countryside is Keany’s Narrator, a Faustian debt collector as dark as his suit and tie, overseeing innocent child’s play making way for crime and tragic final resolution, guns turning from toys to real.

From Vivienne Carlyle’s renditions of Tell Me It’s Not True, Marilyn Monroe and Easy Terms to Gemma Brodrick’s lovely performance as teen crush Linda, caught between Mickey and Eddie, to Nick Richings’ lighting and Matt Malone’s band, the 2025 tour of Blood Brothers shines with high quality in the transition from comedy to tragedy, the two faces of theatre writ large in this peerless, hard-hitting, unsentimental yet emotionally shattering musical.

Bill Kenwright Ltd presents Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/York. Age recommendation: 12 plus.

REVIEW: Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday *****

Niki Evans, as Mrs Johnstone, and Sean Jones, as her son Mickey, as the Blood Brothers principals reunite at the Grand Opera House, where they previously performed together in May 2011

OUT of nowhere in The Rocky Horror Show’s March return to the Grand Opera House, narrator Philip Franks suddenly mischievously mimicked Blood Brothers. Oh, how everyone chortled.

That’s rich, CharlesHutchPress thought, given that Willy Russell’s tragi-comic Liverpool musical is a vastly better structured show without the fall-away in song quality and story in Richard O’Brien’s stupendously silly second act that seemingly all and sundry chooses to ignore.

The chance to compare the two hit shows with the Jacobean tragedy finales comes quickly with the return of Blood Brothers to the Cumberland Street theatre, and if there is any rivalry, it can only be in the number of visits being stacked up.

Rocky Horror? Lost count, but it must be heading for two full sets of fingers. Blood Brothers? Bill Kenwright and Bob Tomson’s perennial production keeps on giving blood, sweat and tears, having chalked up eight runs since 1996.

The ninth is better than ever, bolstered by the return of Niki Evans to the role of Mrs Johnstone after a decade and the chance to see Sean Jones, so synonymous with Mrs J’s son Mickey, on his “last ever tour” after 23 years on the road on and off.

More on, than off, with only eight of them in total spent away from Blood Brothers, his latest break coming since 2019 to tend to his poorly parents. When impresario Kenwright invited him back for the 2022 tour, Jones accepted, and here he is at 51 “running around as a seven-year-old in a baggy green jumper and short trousers”, promising to keep going for as long as Kenwright wants him. Like Bob Dylan’s never-ending tour.

More on Jones’s performance later, but first, what a delight to see Niki Evans reviving her Mrs Johnstone, the mother with the fateful family secret, in a devastatingly moving performance of pathos and pain, jagged-edged Scouse humour, love and desperate resilience.

For Mrs Johnstone, struggling with too many children on an impoverished Liverpool estate and deserted by her waster of a husband, the discovery she is pregnant again, this time with twins, is too much for her budget on the never-never.

She can only “afford” one more child, not two, she tells Mrs Lyons (Paula Tappenden), the barren wife of a travelling businessman from up the posh hill for whom she cleans.

All too rashly, a pact is agreed, one where she gives away one of the baby boys to the cold-hearted Mrs Lyons, setting in motion the superstition that if twins separated at birth ever discover each other’s existence they will die instantly.

Brothers in arms: Sean Jones, as Mickey, left, and Joel Benedict, as Eddie, in Blood Brothers

Clodagh Rodgers, Stephanie Lawrence, Bernie Nolan, Sharon Byatt, Marti Webb, Maureen Nolan and Lyn Paul have all played Mrs J in York; Evans is the first to do so twice, in her case divided by 11 years.

First time around, in May 2011, your reviewer observed: “Above all others, Evans will stick in the mind, for being the most real. What makes her performance all the remarkable is that the Birmingham mother of two had never seen a theatre show, except for pantomimes, nor heard of Blood Brothers or impresario Bill Kenwright when she was offered the role on the West End stage after making the semi-finals of The X Factor in 2007”.

Eleven years on, benefiting from more rings on the tree of theatre life, Evans remains a natural for musical theatre, more than she was for a burst of X Factor-fuelled pop stardom.

At 49, her voice is even more powerful, her broad face an expressive canvas for so many emotions, played out in a Scouse accent that accentuates light and dark alike. Evans’s council-house upbringing and her experiences as a working mum both bring authenticity to the performance too, not least in her renditions of the show’s supreme numbers, Tell Me It’s Not True, Marilyn Monroe and Easy Terms.

The harshest songs aptly go to Robbie Scotcher’s ever-present Narrator, a Faustian debt collector full of social truths and spooked folklore, as he steers the path of Russell’s 1983 cautionary tale.

In football parlance, Blood Brothers is a game of two halves, as one face of theatre, comedy, is ultimately overwhelmed by the other, tragedy, as it befalls the split-up brothers, scally Mickey (Jones) and scholarly Eddie (Joel Benedict).

Divided by class, their paths nevertheless keep crossing through fate, and once more Jones plays it with all the conviction of a man who believes there is no role in musical theatre to rival Mickey on his journey from cheeky, blissfully innocent child’s play, through tongue-tied teenage love pangs for Linda (Carly Burns), to the forlorn broken adult reliant on mind-numbing pills.

More than ever, you note the changes in his movement, his voice, from skip to slouch and slump, from up to down. Sean, whatever you do next, thank you for making this reviewer laugh and cry down the years.

Benedict more than holds his own as Eddie, the charmer in the making with a rebellious streak that then turns to steely political activism as a councillor. The role is more emotionally contained, to emphasise the contrast in nurturing, but nature permeates the brotherly bond in Jones and Benedict’s performances. Burns burns brightly too as lovely Linda.

Andy Walmsley’s familiar street scenery, Nick Richings’ lighting, Matt Malone’s musical direction and Dan Samson’s sound design all add to the hard-hitting impact of Russell’s unsentimental yet heart-rending doomed drama. Evans and Jones, reunited from 2011 to even more telling effect, make Blood Brothers a Must See once more.

Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight (7/4/2022) and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615.

Review by Charles Hutchinson