Grade 9 Notes: Blood Brothers

Mrs Johnstone

The mother who gives one twin away and lives to see what it costs

Mrs Johnstone is a working-class mother in Liverpool, left by her husband, with a large family, little money and twins on the way. Working as a cleaner for the wealthy Mrs Lyons, who cannot have children, she is persuaded to give one baby away and swears on the Bible to keep the secret. She is warm, funny and generous, sings of her life in songs about glamour and hardship, and is threatened by poverty, debt and the police. She is moved to a new estate outside the city, sees her son Mickey's life fall apart, and at the end tells the twins the truth — moments before both are killed. She frames the play, singing at its beginning and its end.

Act One — the bargain

Her first song tells her own story: a romance with a man who once made her feel glamorous like a film star, then marriage, children, weight, and abandonment. The song's comparison of herself to Marilyn Monroe returns later, darker, as her circumstances worsen. Pregnant with twins she cannot afford, she listens to Mrs Lyons's offer, is talked into it, and swears on the Bible.

Key moment. Mrs Johnstone's song comparing herself, as a young bride, to Marilyn Monroe — a comparison that returns later in a darker form (Act One and Act Two). A Hollywood star stands for the glamour her life promised and withheld. Each time the name returns, the comparison grows sadder, until it is linked to depression and pills — a symbol of how dreams sold to the poor turn into loss.

Key moment. Mrs Johnstone's talk of buying on credit, with goods taken back when she cannot pay (Act One). Buying on credit sums up her life of debt: goods paid for slowly, then taken back. Poverty is presented as a trap that her warmth cannot spend its way out of.

The move and the end

Key moment. Mrs Johnstone's hopeful song about the family's move to the new estate (Act One). Rehoused out of the city, she sings of a fresh start. The audience, who have seen the ending, hear the hope as dramatic irony: the new estate will not save her son.

Key moment. Mrs Johnstone's final song of grief over her sons' deaths (Act One and Act Two). The song of the ending, sung over the twins' deaths, which the play's opening tableau has already shown. Its plea to be told that the deaths did not happen makes the whole story a mother's grief.

How Russell builds Mrs Johnstone in language and structure

Mrs Johnstone speaks in a direct, warm, Liverpool voice, often comic, and expresses her deepest feelings in song rather than speech.

Her songs return as reprises: the Marilyn Monroe comparison begins as a memory of romance and returns linked to despair.

Structurally she frames the play: her grief is seen at the opening and heard in the final song.

Mrs Johnstone in context

A deserted mother with a large family, living on credit, she stands for working-class women for whom poverty narrowed every choice.

Her rehousing on a new estate reflects the slum clearance that moved many Liverpool families out of the city.

Relationships

• Mickey — The twin she keeps, whom she cannot protect from poverty and its consequences.
• Eddie — The twin she gives away, whom she meets again and treats with affection.
• Mrs Lyons — Her employer, who takes her son and later turns against her.

What Mrs Johnstone stands for

• The Bible she swears on: a promise that binds her silence.
• Marilyn Monroe: glamour promised and withheld.

Why Russell made Mrs Johnstone

• To present a working-class mother with sympathy, humour and dignity.
• To show how poverty shapes the choices of decent people.

Other readings

• A victim of poverty forced into an impossible bargain.
• A loving mother whose single act of desperation sets everything in motion.
• The play's moral centre, whose warmth contrasts with Mrs Lyons's anxiety.

Essay arguments

• Russell frames the play with Mrs Johnstone's grief, so the story is told as a mother's loss rather than a crime.
• Her songs turn personal hardship into a commentary on class and the dreams sold to the poor.
• Her bargain with Mrs Lyons shows poverty making a choice that no mother would make freely.

In theme essays

• Class: buying on credit.
• Fate: her final song of grief and the ending shown first.

Questions that get asked

• How does Russell present Mrs Johnstone as a mother in Blood Brothers?
• How far does Russell present Mrs Johnstone as responsible for what happens to her sons?

Think you understand Mrs Johnstone? Teach it, then defend it against Willy Russell →

Mickey Johnstone

The twin who is kept — and who has nothing

Mickey is the twin Mrs Johnstone keeps. At seven he is lively, cheeky and envious of his older brother Sammy; he meets Eddie, becomes his blood brother, and teaches him to swear. At fourteen he is awkward and in love with Linda, in trouble at school, and living on the new estate where his family has been rehoused. As an adult he works in a factory, marries Linda when she is pregnant, loses his job, is drawn by Sammy into a robbery in which Sammy shoots a man, and goes to prison. He comes out depressed and dependent on pills. When he learns of Linda's affair with Eddie he takes a gun to confront him; told the truth by his mother, he cries that he could have been Eddie, and both brothers are killed.

Act One — seven

Key moment. Mickey, aged seven, boasting that he is almost eight (Act One). His first words about himself stretch his age upward, the way children do. The play makes the adult actor play a child, and the comedy of being seven is played for warmth before the adult tragedy.

Key moment. The two boys cutting their hands and swearing to be blood brothers (Act One). The boys cut their hands and swear brotherhood, not knowing they are twins. The phrase is the title and the play's central irony: the bond they choose is the bond they already have.

Act Two — adulthood

Laid off from the factory, Mickey cannot find work. Eddie, home from university, offers him money and friendship; Mickey rejects them, saying in effect that he has had to grow up while Eddie has not needed to. After prison he is withdrawn and dependent on antidepressants, a man the play shows hollowed out.

Key moment. Mickey's last cry, on learning the truth, that he might have lived Eddie's life (Act Two). His last words before the shooting. The line turns the play's argument into a single cry: the brothers' lives were decided by which home each was given, not by who they were.

How Russell builds Mickey in language and structure

At seven Mickey's speech is quick, boastful and full of street slang; the comedy depends on an adult actor playing a child.

As an adult he speaks less and more bitterly; his silences after prison show depression through absence.

Structurally his life is staged in three ages, so the audience measures his decline against his own childhood.

Mickey in context

His redundancy belongs to the factory closures and high unemployment of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

His dependence on antidepressants shows depression managed with medication rather than cured by work or hope.

Relationships

• Eddie — His twin and blood brother, who has everything he lacks.
• Linda — His childhood friend and wife.
• Sammy — His older brother, who draws him into crime.

What Mickey Johnstone stands for

• The gun: a toy in childhood, real in adulthood.
• The pills: despair managed rather than cured.

Why Russell made Mickey Johnstone

• To show how unemployment and poverty destroy a lively, loving boy.
• To make the audience compare two identical boys shaped by different homes.

Other readings

• A victim of class and economic collapse.
• A figure of fate, doomed by the superstition.
• A tragic everyman whose decline is caused by a society that discards him.

Essay arguments

• Russell shows Mickey's decline as the result of class and unemployment rather than character.
• The contrast between Mickey at seven and at twenty-plus measures what poverty takes away.
• His cry that he could have been Eddie makes nature versus nurture the play's final argument.

In theme essays

• Class: his cry that he could have been Eddie.
• Growing up: the boast that he is almost eight.

Questions that get asked

• How does Russell present Mickey's life in Blood Brothers?
• How does Russell use Mickey to explore ideas about social class?

Think you understand Mickey Johnstone? Teach it, then defend it against Willy Russell →

Edward (Eddie) Lyons

The twin who is given away — and given everything

Eddie is the twin given to Mrs Lyons. He grows up with money, education and confidence: at seven he is polite, generous and fascinated by Mickey's freedom; at fourteen he is at boarding school; as an adult he goes to university, becomes a councillor, and helps Linda and Mickey find a house and work. He loves Linda quietly and has an affair with her when Mickey is ill. He is kind but naive about Mickey's life, offering money without understanding what unemployment means. He is shot by Mickey at the end.

Childhood

Eddie shares his sweets freely and admires Mickey's swearing and roughness. When he repeats a swear word Mickey taught him, Mrs Lyons is horrified. The contrast in the boys' speech and manners marks their different homes from the first meeting.

Key moment. The two boys cutting their hands and swearing to be blood brothers (Act One). For Eddie, who has no siblings in his home, the pact is a deep wish for companionship. The irony is that Mickey is his brother already.

Adulthood

Home from university, Eddie wants to celebrate with Mickey and cannot understand why Mickey, newly unemployed, will not join him. He offers money; Mickey refuses. Later, as a councillor, he uses his position to find Mickey and Linda a home and Mickey a job, and begins a relationship with Linda.

How Russell builds Eddie in language and structure

Eddie speaks in polite, educated standard English, and his delight at Mickey's swearing shows how different their homes are.

As an adult his language is generous but naive, assuming that money can solve Mickey's problems.

Structurally he is Mickey's mirror: scenes are paired so that the audience compares the twins at each stage.

Eddie in context

His boarding school and university place show how education reproduced class advantage.

His role as a councillor gives him the power over housing and jobs that Mickey's family lack.

Relationships

• Mickey — His twin and blood brother.
• Mrs Lyons — The mother who raised him and fears losing him.
• Linda — The woman he loves and has an affair with.

What Edward (Eddie) Lyons stands for

• His education and career: what money opens.
• His generosity: kindness that cannot see inequality.

Why Russell made Edward (Eddie) Lyons

• To provide the mirror that shows what Mickey could have had.
• To show privilege that is kind but blind.

Other readings

• A kind, generous friend who does not understand inequality.
• A privileged young man whose affair betrays his brother.
• A victim of the same superstition and the same class system.

Essay arguments

• Russell makes Eddie likeable so that the audience cannot blame the boys' differences on character.
• Eddie's offer of money shows privilege unable to see what it has.
• His death shows that the class system destroys the privileged twin too.

In theme essays

• Nature and nurture: two identical boys.
• Class: the offer of money.

Questions that get asked

• How does Russell present Eddie in Blood Brothers?
• How does Russell use Eddie and Mickey to explore ideas about nature and nurture?

Think you understand Edward (Eddie) Lyons? Teach it, then defend it against Willy Russell →

Mrs Lyons

The wealthy woman who takes a child and invents a curse

Mrs Lyons is a middle-class woman who cannot have children. She persuades her cleaner, Mrs Johnstone, to give her one of her twins, pretends to be pregnant herself, and, once she has the baby, sacks Mrs Johnstone and frightens her with a superstition: if twins separated at birth learn the truth, both will die. She lives in fear that Eddie will be taken back, moves her family away, grows increasingly unstable, attacks Mrs Johnstone with a knife, and finally tells Mickey about Linda and Eddie, setting the ending in motion.

The bargain and the curse

Key moment. Mrs Lyons inventing a curse: twins separated at birth who learn the truth will both die at once (Act One). She invents the superstition to keep Mrs Johnstone silent. The formal, almost legal phrasing makes a lie sound like law — and the play lets the audience wonder whether her invention comes true.

Key moment. The Narrator's song built on the superstition of new shoes on a table (Act One). The song built around the superstition that new shoes on a table bring bad luck. It follows Mrs Lyons's lie and turns it into a threat sung to the audience.

Fear and decline

Each time the boys meet, Mrs Lyons's anxiety grows. She moves the family to the country to separate them. When they meet again, she confronts Mrs Johnstone with a knife. In Act Two she reveals Linda's affair to Mickey, and so brings the gun to the council chamber.

How Russell builds Mrs Lyons in language and structure

Mrs Lyons speaks in standard English and uses formal, persuasive language to make her offer and her threat.

Her superstition is phrased like a law, which makes her lie sound like fate.

Structurally her anxiety grows with each meeting of the boys, ending in violence and the revelation that triggers the ending.

Mrs Lyons in context

Her ability to take a child and to move house when frightened shows the security money brings.

The bargain is made possible by the gap between employer and cleaner.

Relationships

• Mrs Johnstone — The woman whose child she takes and whom she comes to fear.
• Eddie — The son she raises and dreads losing.
• Mr Lyons — Her husband, largely absent on business.

What Mrs Lyons stands for

• The superstition: a lie that comes to feel like fate.
• Her fear: the insecurity of having taken what is not hers.

Why Russell made Mrs Lyons

• To show money buying what poverty cannot keep.
• To introduce the superstition that the play sets against class.

Other readings

• A villain who exploits her cleaner's poverty.
• A lonely, frightened woman destroyed by guilt and fear.
• A figure of middle-class power who takes what she wants.

Essay arguments

• Russell shows Mrs Lyons using money and status to take a child, and then using superstition to keep it.
• Her growing instability suggests the cost of a choice built on a lie.
• Her final act makes her, as much as fate, the cause of the deaths.

In theme essays

• Fate and superstition: the curse that both twins will die.
• Class: the bargain.

Questions that get asked

• How does Russell present Mrs Lyons in Blood Brothers?
• How does Russell use the two mothers to explore ideas about class?

Think you understand Mrs Lyons? Teach it, then defend it against Willy Russell →

Linda

The girl who loves Mickey and is caught between the twins

Linda is Mickey's childhood friend: brave, direct and loyal, she stands up for him as a child and loves him as a teenager. She marries Mickey when she is pregnant, keeps the family going when he loses his job and goes to prison, and, desperate, asks Eddie for help with a house and a job. Lonely and worried by Mickey's depression, she turns to Eddie, and their affair is what Mrs Lyons reveals. She is present at the end.

Childhood and youth

As a child Linda plays with Mickey and defends him; at fourteen she is open about loving him while he is too embarrassed to say anything. Eddie loves her silently. The three are briefly happy together before adulthood.

Key moment. The Narrator's recurring refrain warning that the devil has come to collect a debt (Throughout). The refrain interrupts the teenagers' happiest moments, reminding the audience that the friendship of three will not last.

Adulthood

Linda copes with poverty, a small child and a husband in prison and then lost in depression. Her turn to Eddie is presented with sympathy as loneliness rather than betrayal, though it triggers the ending.

How Russell builds Linda in language and structure

Linda speaks bluntly and bravely as a child and teenager, saying what Mickey cannot.

As an adult she is anxious and practical, speaking of bills, work and her husband's illness.

Structurally she stands between the twins in every act, linking their worlds.

Linda in context

Her early marriage and pregnancy show how limited young working-class women's choices could be.

Her dependence on Eddie's help for a home and a job reflects the power of those who controlled housing and work.

Relationships

• Mickey — Her childhood friend and husband.
• Eddie — The friend who loves her and with whom she has an affair.

What Linda stands for

• Her loyalty: the steady love Mickey loses.
• Her position between the twins: the class divide made personal.

Why Russell made Linda

• To show a young woman's life shaped by early marriage and poverty.
• To place the twins' rivalry in a relationship rather than only in class.

Other readings

• A loyal partner driven to an affair by loneliness.
• A young woman trapped by early marriage and poverty.
• The play's link between the twins' worlds.

Essay arguments

• Russell presents Linda's affair with sympathy, showing it as the result of Mickey's despair.
• Linda's early marriage and poverty show how class narrows women's lives too.
• Her loyalty in childhood makes her later turn to Eddie more painful.

In theme essays

• Growing up: the teenagers' friendship.
• Class: early marriage and poverty.

Questions that get asked

• How does Russell present Linda in Blood Brothers?
• How does Russell present relationships in Blood Brothers?

Think you understand Linda? Teach it, then defend it against Willy Russell →

Social class

Two identical boys, two homes, two lives: the play's central argument is that class decides who gets what.

The twins are genetically identical, so every difference between them is made by their homes. Eddie gets money, education, a university place and a career; Mickey gets poverty, a factory job, unemployment and prison. The play presses the difference in small details — the boys' speech, their toys, how the police treat each family — and in large ones: who is rehoused, who is laid off, who can afford to be generous. The policeman who threatens Mrs Johnstone over the boys' stone-throwing is polite and apologetic in Mr Lyons's house.

Key moment. The Narrator's closing question: was it superstition, or what the English call class? (Act Two (ending)). The Narrator's closing question sets superstition against class and leaves the audience to answer — but the play has spent two acts showing what class does.

Class also shapes the two mothers' bargain. Mrs Lyons can offer comfort and security that Mrs Johnstone cannot; Mrs Johnstone is persuaded partly by the promise that her son will have everything. The bargain itself is an exchange made possible by inequality.

Context that changes the reading. The play follows its characters over about twenty years in and around Liverpool, a city that lost much of its industry and saw very high unemployment in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the play was written. Slum clearance moved many families out of the inner city to new towns such as Skelmersdale. The play's story of a working-class family losing work and hope belongs to that history.

Use this in an essay. Frame: Russell makes the twins identical so that class, not character, has to explain every difference between their lives.

Think you understand Social class in Blood Brothers? Teach it, then defend it →

Fate and superstition

The Narrator, the refrain and Mrs Lyons's curse suggest fate; the ending asks whether fate is only a name for class.

Mrs Lyons invents the superstition that separated twins who learn the truth will die — and the play ends with exactly that. The Narrator, dressed in different roles, appears at moments of choice and sings of debts and the devil. Superstitions — new shoes on the table among them — punctuate the action. The audience knows the ending from the first scene, so every hopeful moment feels doomed.

Key moment. The Narrator's recurring refrain warning that the devil has come to collect a debt (Throughout). The refrain presents fate as a debt collector.

Yet the deaths have human causes: a lie, poverty, unemployment, prison, an affair, a gun. The Narrator's last question — superstition, or class? — invites the audience to see fate as a story people tell about what society does.

Context that changes the reading. Superstition was a familiar part of working-class life in many communities, and the play's chorus-like Narrator draws on an old theatrical tradition of a figure who knows the end and comments on the action.

Use this in an essay. Frame: The play wears superstition as its costume and class as its argument.

Think you understand fate and superstition in Blood Brothers? Teach it, then defend it →

Nature and nurture (minor)

Identical twins raised apart test whether who we are comes from birth or upbringing.

Mickey and Eddie are drawn to each other instantly and share a birthday, but their speech, schooling, confidence and futures diverge. The play suggests that upbringing — money, schooling, opportunity — makes the difference. Mickey's final cry that he could have been Eddie states the idea outright.

The play sets up the experiment carefully. The boys are drawn to each other at their first meeting, discover they share a birthday, and fall for the same girl — signs that something in them is shared. But at every stage the differences come from outside: Eddie's vocabulary and confidence from his schooling, Mickey's roughness from the street, Eddie's university place from money, Mickey's prison sentence from unemployment and his brother's influence. Even their reactions to the police differ because the police treat their families differently.

Key moment. Mickey's last cry, on learning the truth, that he might have lived Eddie's life (Act Two). The play's argument for nurture in five words: Mickey recognises, too late, that the only thing separating him from Eddie was which mother took him home.

Context that changes the reading. Debates about whether intelligence and character are inherited or made were common in discussions of education and selection in post-war Britain.

Use this in an essay. Frame: Two boys born on the same day are given different homes, and the play spends two acts showing the homes win.

Think you understand Nature and nurture in Blood Brothers? Teach it, then defend it →

Childhood and growing up (minor)

The play moves from playful childhood to grim adulthood, and the change is the tragedy.

At seven the boys play with toy guns and swear blood brotherhood; at fourteen they are awkward and in love; at eighteen and beyond Mickey's life narrows to work, debt and despair. Adult actors play the children, so the audience watches the same bodies age. The toy gun of childhood becomes the real gun of the ending.

Key moment. Mickey, aged seven, boasting that he is almost eight (Act One). A child's eagerness to grow up, bitterly answered by the adult life to come.

Context that changes the reading. For working-class young people in areas of high unemployment, the move from school to work could mean a move from play straight into insecurity.

Use this in an essay. Frame: The play turns a child's toy gun into a man's real one, and growing up into the road to the council chamber.

Think you understand childhood and growing up in Blood Brothers? Teach it, then defend it →