Blood brothers

Examine how Russell portrays the characters Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons In the musical.Look closely at what they say and how they say it and refer closely to the text in your answer. I think Willy Russell has portrayed Mrs Johnstone as a loving and caring person knowing instinctively what’s right and what’s wrong. She always involves her family when she thinks of life and just thinks of simple things as luxury. This shows she is quite poor. Although she doesn't have much money still she tries her best to make her family happy and satisfied.For example, when one of her child ask her “Why can’t I have a bike?,she replies “I’ll……. have a look in the catalogue next week.” This shows a soft side of her towards her children,as she wants her children to have all the things they want but, due to her financial issues, she can’t really afford them much. Russell provides Mrs Johnstone’s financial situation as a polar opposite to Mrs Lyons as this wealthy character has never had to consider spending on credit: from a “catalogue.”
In addition, Mrs Johnstone is naturally a kind and loving mother.Another classic example where we can see her affection toward her child is when Mrs Johnstone says “ Nothin’,son.Go on, you go out an’ play,....................But, ‘ey,dont you go playin’ with those hooligans down at the rough end.” Here we can see although she wants her child to go “out” and “play” but she wants to make sure that Mickey is safe too. If I witnessed this play performed on stage, I would feel a great amount of sympathy towards Mrs Johnstone because she has a lot of children and loves them all equally but she simply cannot support them financially as a cleaner. Some audiences at the time the play was first performed may not have been so openly sympathetic towards Mrs Johnstone’s situation because the audience who could afford to watch theatre at that time where middle class people and not people like Mrs johnstone
Willy Russell has also portrayed as a superstitious and lonely woman. ‘Oh God. Never put new shoes on a table Mrs Lyons.’ At the beginning of the play.This may be due to the fact that she is uneducated and that leads to Mrs Lyons taking advantage of her in getting what she wants.We can see this at page Act One page 23, Mrs Lyons says “They…….they say that if either twins learns that once was a pair,they shall both immediately die……………………………...you will kill them “.From this we can conclude that Russell has portrayed Mrs Lyons as a manipulative,self-centred character, who uses other for her own gain.equally, the audience may again sympathise with Mrs Johnstone due to the fact that Mrs Lyons uses the angry verb “kill” with the personal pronoun “you” in the same sentence. Mrs Lyons is portrayed as a cold woman who dosenRussell chooses to open Blood Brothers with a Narrator speaking a prologue. He begins the prologue with ‘So did y’hear the story of the Johnstone twins?
We, the audience are made to sympathize with Mrs. Johnston on many occasions varying from the beginning of the play, even before the twins are born to the end of the play, when we learn about their unfortunate death.
Rainy day - N In the play Blood Brothers Willy Russell explores the differences between a working class family and a middle class family. By using Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons as two complete extremes, Russell has explored the history of the British class system in a very extreme way. aruto ShippudenFrom the very beginning of the play,we the audience are made to sympathize with Mrs Johnstone even before the twins were born and till to the end of the play, we learn about their unfortunate death.We the audience first came across Mrs Johnstone singing”By the time I was twenty-five,I looked like forty-two,....... Me husband,he’d walked out on me,A month or two ago…..”.During the song we learned about her past life, about her husband and why he left him.We can say that Russell tries to gain support for Mrs Johnstone and the lyrics of the song contributes to this fact