Structure, Music & the Narrator
Cyclical Structure: Death at the Start
Blood Brothers opens with the twins lying dead on the stage. The Narrator tells the audience what happened before showing how. This cyclical structure is Russell’s most powerful dramatic choice. By revealing the ending first, he transforms the entire play into a piece of dramatic irony. Every moment of joy, friendship and hope is undercut by the audience’s knowledge that it will end in death.
The effect on the audience is profound. When the seven-year-old boys become blood brothers, the audience feels warmth and dread. When Mrs Johnstone sings “Bright New Day,” the audience hears hope and futility. Russell uses the cyclical structure to create an emotional double-layer that intensifies every scene. The play is not a mystery (“what will happen?”) but a tragedy (“how will it happen, and can nothing stop it?”).
Russell reveals the ending first to create dramatic irony throughout the entire play. The audience watches every scene knowing the twins will die. This transforms hope into heartbreak, comedy into tragedy, and friendship into foreboding. The cyclical structure also reinforces the theme of fate: the outcome feels inevitable, just as the class system makes Mickey’s downfall inevitable.
Songs as Emotional Commentary
Russell originally wrote Blood Brothers as a straight play in 1981. He rewrote it as a musical in 1983 because he felt that songs could express what dialogue could not. The songs in Blood Brothers do not simply entertain — they function as windows into characters’ inner lives, vehicles for Russell’s political argument, and structural bridges that compress time.
“Marilyn Monroe” opens the play and establishes Mrs Johnstone’s character: youthful dreams destroyed by poverty and abandonment. The comparison to Monroe is ironic (Monroe died tragically) and poignant (Mrs Johnstone’s glamour has been crushed by childbearing and debt). “Easy Terms” is a bitter commentary on hire purchase — the debt trap that keeps the working class in perpetual poverty. The “easy terms” are anything but easy; they are a form of economic enslavement.
“Bright New Day” accompanies the move to Skelmersdale. The song is the play’s most optimistic moment, but it is saturated with dramatic irony: the audience knows the hope will not last. Russell uses the upbeat melody to heighten the contrast with the tragedy ahead.
“That Guy” reveals how much each twin envies the other. Mickey watches Eddie and wishes he could be “that guy” — confident, charming, comfortable — while Eddie sings that he envies Mickey’s freedom. The song works like a soliloquy set to music: neither boy could say these things in dialogue, but the song lets the audience hear Mickey’s pain, frustration and growing sense of injustice.
“Tell Me It’s Not True” closes the play. Mrs Johnstone sings it over the bodies of her dead sons. The song is a lament — desperate, repetitive, refusing to accept reality. Its simplicity is its power: a mother who has lost everything can only repeat “tell me it’s not true.” The audience, who has watched the entire tragedy unfold, knows it is true — and Russell makes them feel the full weight of that knowledge.
The Narrator: Fate, Chorus & Conscience
The Narrator is Blood Brothers’ most unusual dramatic device. He does not participate in the action as a normal character. He observes, comments, foreshadows and judges. His repeated refrain — “Shoes upon the table / An’ a spider’s been killed” — is a motif that punctuates the play like a drumbeat of doom. Every time the Narrator speaks, the atmosphere darkens.
The Narrator has three dramatic functions. First, he is a fate figure: his presence suggests that the tragedy is predetermined, that forces beyond the characters’ control are at work. Lines like “the devil’s got your number” reinforce this. Second, he is a Greek chorus: he provides commentary, context and transitions between scenes. He tells the audience when time has passed, when the boys have grown up, when the mood has shifted. Third, he is a conscience: his final question (“superstition or class?”) is Russell’s voice challenging the audience to think critically about what they have witnessed.
The Narrator has three functions: (1) fate figure who makes the tragedy feel predetermined, (2) Greek chorus who provides commentary and bridges time gaps, and (3) conscience who forces the audience to confront Russell’s political message. His “shoes upon the table” motif is the play’s rhythmic spine of foreboding.
Russell uses parallel scenes to make the class divide visible on stage. The policeman visits both households: aggressive with the Johnstones, polite with the Lyons. Mickey gets a factory job; Eddie goes to university. Mickey is made redundant; Eddie becomes a councillor. These parallels are not subtle — Russell wants the audience to see the injustice clearly and unmistakably.
Cross-cutting intensifies in the final act. Russell cuts between Linda and Eddie’s affair, Mickey’s depression, and Mrs Lyons’s scheming. The technique creates a sense of accelerating catastrophe — multiple storylines converging towards the inevitable ending. The audience can see the collision coming but is powerless to stop it, mirroring the characters’ own powerlessness within the class system.