Article from Time Out In London magazine from 1993.
BARDS OF A FEATHER
If the stricken city of Liverpool is taking its revenge by systemically capturing the commanding heights of British cultural expression (pop music, football, stand-up comedy), it's odds on the next strategic target will be the writing of dramatic fiction. In fact it may have fallen already.
The arrival of Willy Russell's new folk-musical 'Blood Brothers' in the West End comes at a time when the same writer's 'Educating Rita', a two-hander about a 26-year-old working-class woman who wants to 'know everything' and her Open University tutor, is already providing the nation's reps with a sort of built-in subsidy.
Theatres which aren't doing a play by Russell are usually doing one by Alan Bleasdale, whose television series 'The Boys From The Blackstuff' will be the people's choice for every award going this year whatever the professionals decide.
Ironically, just as Anfield seemed to be getting established as a chronically Second Division ground until the likes of Shankly and Paisley took charge, 'Blood Brothers' comes to London from a theatre that was emphatically in the doldrums two years ago; Liverpool's Playhouse may be Britain's oldest rep, but it shares many of the problems of a city whose grandeur just stops short of being derelict, and whose inventive energy is being steadily sapped by unemployment on precisely the scale that made Yosser Hughes' catchphrase 'Giss a job' so potent.
Two years ago the job of running the Playhouse became vacant again. Four writers formed a gang to make a joint application; this was brave of Russell, Bleasdale, Bill Morrison and Christopher Bond, but the board was even braver - it gave them the job.
The practical side has worked like this: Bond is artistic director, MOrrison has had the responsibility for the Studio theatre, and the other two have been 'associates' who write the plays that sell the seats. Another associate director, Pip Broughton, who is a 'real' director, has also been added to the team.
Morrison, author of 'Flying Blind', arguably the best play ever to come out of Ulster, reports: 'I always said the problems would be ones brought by success, and that's how it's turned out. As I speak to you Chris Bond is in New York rehearsing Debbie Harry of Blondie in the American version of "Trafford Tanzi" (it's called 'Teaneck Tanzi' there).
'Willy Russell is in Paris negotiating his personal appearance at the Cannes film festival for the film of "Educating Rita". Alan Bleasdale's a wreck at the moment, tormented by people following up the success of "Blackstuff": the director-general of the CBI was in Liverpool the other day, quoted all over the evening paper saying, "I echo Yosser's cry". That's not what he wanted.'
And Morrison himself? The Studio is the indisputable success of the Playhouse regime, with a string of well-attached, critically-praised world and British premieres behind it. That's Billy Morrison's work. although he has barely written a line in the last two years.
When the contracts come up for renewal in June there'll probably be changes of emphasis but no break-up of the Gang. Bond's commitments are so great outside the Playhouse that he's likely to play less of a role there. Russell and Bleasdale? Well, they're popular figures in Liverpool and in the building, but their jobs are clearly seen as writers. Russell occasionally directs his own work, but generally the pair limit themselves to a consultative role.
That leaves Bill Morrison risking his writing skills and the easy goodwill accorded to successful writers in the business for the often painful graft of getting plays on the stage.
'I'm determined to give it another year. I don't think the job of creating a writers' theatre is finished yet, and I don't want to retire defeated. How you do that and write at the same time I haven't discovered.'
Some of the job has been done, though. The Playhouse's commissioning policy (of other writers) should be about to pay off. Plays by Nell Dunn, Mary O'Malley and Don Webb are in the pipeline, and 'The Red Devils' - written by resident writer Debbie Horsfield about four Manchester United supporters - opens soon. So does 'City Echoes' by local discovery Jimmy McGovern and 'Walking on Walter' by 'Trafford Tanzi's' author, Claire Luckham.
But the Playhouse can't count on selling seats yet. 'They'll come to anything by Willy and Alan,' says Bill Morrison. 'What we can't make them do is turn out to something else on the strength of that.'
Chris Bond's own production of 'Sweeney Todd' played to full houses in Watford, but to less than 40 per cent in Liverpool. The normal middle-class rep audience is afraid to go into the centre of Liverpool at night, preferring instead to drive down to Chester or even into Mold in North Wales for its theatre.
Instead these writers have persuaded the kind of people Bleasdale and Russell write about to come into the theatre; they've presented a different and more ambitious programme and they've loosened up the formality of the theatre.
Morrison says: 'Theatre's a very totalitarian contract. We say: "You will sit down in the seat that is numbered for you, you will not smoke or drink and I'll tell you when to laugh.'"
Liverpool loved 'Blood Brothers', but will it matter to anyone except the people directly involved? London may find it naive, where Liverpool found it bitter, comic and truthful. The story concerns a working-class woman whose love of dancing and gentle envy of Marilyn Monroe leads her to become pregnant - again. She has twins and gives one away to a child-less middle-class woman for whom she chars.
The play looks at the persistence with which the lives of the artificially separated brothers pursue each other to a tragic ending. Russell has written a folk ballad which includes a wry Liverpudlian narrator talking in rhyming couplets. He presents the story as a myth, an inevitable, ordained disaster, then rounds on the audience to say that what looks like superstition is really what we've learned to understand as class. As in 'Blackstuff' the anger comes as a shock.
The songs in 'Blood Brothers' serve the words well, are cleverly arranged by Pete Filleul and well sung by a Barbara Dickson headed cast.
Dickson's acting is strong and undemonstrative", but her role becomes progressively less important, unbalancing the show somewhat.
Although Bleasdale's never got nearer the West End than the Hammersmith production of 'Having a Ball' (and he doesn't much care, either), Russell has had hits with 'Educating
Rita' and the Beatles play 'John, Paul, George, Ringo.. .and Bert'.
'Blood Brothers' however, started life as a show for Merseyside Young People's Theatre. And 'community theatre' is a showbiz phrase implying something that nobody much in the community actually goes to see.
However, Bill Morrison says optimistically of Russell and Bleasdale: 'These boys have bust that wide open.' Let's hope so.
