Article from the The Daily Mail newspaper from January 1983.
A FORTUNE FROM THE POOL
Educating Rita took a year out of Liverpool author Willy Russell's life - educating Barbara took a little longer.
Rita turned Russell into Britain's top young playwright. The play has been exported from the RSC to London's West End and eight other countries from Turkey to Australia.
Later this year, it will be released as a film starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters.
Now Russell has returned to his roots with a second major musical based on his home town, Liverpool. It stars pop singer Barbara Dickson, who first worked with Russell in 1974 in John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert, a musical about the Beatles which became a West End hit.
Then, both playwright and pop singer were unknown outside Liverpool. She was a £15 a night folk singer on the university circuit and he ran a folk club in Liverpool.
After the West End run, in which she sang all the show's songs, she sang on TV shows, had a number of hit singles, toured Europe and sold out her Albert Hall concert.
Now, eight years on, Russell and Dickson have linked up again. He's written his second musical, Blood Brothers, which opened this week in Liverpool, and on the strength of its
reception, has been bought by a West End impresario. It will come to London later this year.
This time Barbara Dickson will do more than sing - she makes her acting debut as a down-trodden mother of twins.
Russell's caustic wit and Dickson's haunting voice combine to produce a perfectly etched performance.
Blood Brothers, conceived on a more ambitious scale than either Rita or his Beatles musical, traces the tragedy of twin brothers separated at birth and doomed from the cradle to destroy each other.
Russell admits he was taking a risk employing a talented singer with no acting experience. 'I didn't want a brilliant actress who would make your stomach clench up as soon as she started to sing,' he says.
Barbara Dickson was so eager to piay the role that she postponed two TV shows and a nationwide tour to make her debut.
Their life-styles have completely changed since they first met in 1969.
'She turned up at my house the night before I got married, to discuss a gig,' he said. 'Only 15 people turned up at it. It wasn't her fault. It was apathy among the students.'
When he wrote his Beatles musical he insisted that Barbara sang the songs : "She has a purity of voice, an English blues sound, a very haunting quality,' he said.
Barbara has now moved from her home town, Dunfermline, to a rambling Victorian house in London. She drives a zippy Saab turbo.
Russell still has his office in the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, where it all began, but though taciturn about his private life admits to having moved from an 18th century home in the most undesirable area to an old cottage in the suburbs. 'If you have got to live in a city then Liverpool is a lot better than London,' he said.
Together they have created a musical which owes nothing to the Broadway tradition of highly strung governesses climbing every mountain.
Blood Brothers takes its style from a city which, from The Beatles to The Biackstuff has produced an alternative show-business tradition of abrasive, archly humorous, hugely
musical, often angry entertainment.
'It's a terrific challenge to me. I just hope that I can live up to Willy's expectations.' said Barbara . . . before launching into the downbeat, gritty role that could turn her into the musical star of the year.
