SO DID Y’ HEAR THE STORY
OF THE JOHNSTONE TWINS?
AS LIKE EACH OTHER AS TWO NEW PINS
OF ONE WOMB BORN, ON THE SELF SAME DAY,
HOW ONE WAS KEPT AND ONE GIVEN AWAY?
AN’ DID YOU NEVER HEAR HOW THE JOHNSTONES DIED,
NEVER KNOWING THAT THEY SHARED ONE NAME,
TILL THE DAY THEY DIED, WHEN A MOTHER CRIED
MY OWN DEAR SONS LIE SLAIN.
AN DID Y’ NEVER HEAR OF THE MOTHER SO CRUEL,
THERE’S A STONE IN PLACE OF HER HEART?
THEN BRING HER ON AND COME JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES
HOW SHE CAME TO PLAY THIS PART.
These words are the beginning of a musical in the West End, Blood Brothers. I’ll spare you my own synopsis, suffice to say, the narrator sums it up well.
I only narrowly missed seeing a spice girl (Mel C) play the role of the mom – she’s scheduled to start the end of October. But while my viewing may not make for interesting party chatter, I gradually came to love this play.
Fifteen minutes into the show, I’d started to convince myself that the British audience was simply different than the American audience. Surely this sort of show could never run for twenty-one years on Broadway.
Yep, twenty-one years.
Now that’s a long run. And, honestly, it didn’t seem that good. I was not in love with the show’s fixation on Marilyn Monroe, nor the weird rhymes of the narrator.
I don’t know when that changed, or how it slowly wormed its way into my affection, but by the end, during its five curtain calls, I was cheering as loud as the rest of the crowd.
Blood Brothers
Tagged as:
I *am* pretentious enough to spell it theatre
