Variety is the Spice of Life? Not Always! -- Guest Review by Doctor Terror
Blood Brothers (national tour)
There are certain shows where you can be pretty sure what you're getting: West Side Story; Oliver!; My Fair My Lady; Les Miserables. There are others where this is still substantially true but you casually wonder what they've done with it: The Threepenny Opera; Oklahoma; The Rocky Horror Show; anything at all by Andrew Lloyd -Webber, Cabaret (in the latter instance, the answer is they've made the seats five times as expensive). In the case of Blood Brothers, however, the orchestration, set, blocking and delivery were indistinguishable from when I first saw it thirty-five years ago or the half a dozen times since then. Hell, even the programme looked identical. And none of us sitting in the audience would have wanted it any other way
Some of the acting did, admittedly, stand out: Michael Gillette was particularly good as wayward older brother Billy this time, I thought. But the brothers themselves? Every bit as good as the others I've seen in their roles. Vivienne Carlyle as Mrs Johnstone? Perfect! But she could have been Barbra Dickson...or Kiki Dee...or Petula Clarke...or...
Perhaps you can't improve on perfection. Perhaps the Liverpool location, the time it's set in and everything else is already so superlative that nothing more can be done. Who knows?
So what's it like? It's like it was when you last saw it. EXACTLY like that. And you would have been livid had it been otherwise.