Article from The Liverpool Echo newspaper from April 1983.
BLOOD BROTHERS : Joe Riley reports on the West End welcome for Willy Russell's hit show
It was, to quote the title of another Willy Russell play that has been transformed into a musical, Our Day Out. It was a charabanc, no less. Forty of us doing a Jimmy Savile on cheap inter-city to get to the West End and back in 24 hours.
All cakes and ale and champagne and stories of people setting fire to themselves at the hairdressers. Let the heartburn begin.
And all for Liverpool, The Playhouse and Mr. Russell, whose musical Blood Brothers opened at The Lyric on Shaftesbury Avenue, last night.
Nine years ago, when Russell was but a lad of 26, the same theatre rang to the sound of hands clapping for his Beatles show, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert.
In those days, our now big name draw, Barbara Dickson, was herself no more than a sounding bell-like treble belting out Lennon and McCartney from behind a baby grand.
But the London brigade of '83, who turned up looking both Pierre Cardin and Army and Navy now know both Miss Dickson and Mr. Russell. What's more, the national newspapers and the television channels have been brimming over with them for the past few days.
Talking about his last West End venture, Educating Rita, Willy tells The Times: "The human being changes for a while until she can synthesize what she is becoming with what she was..."
This is considered by those of us who know Willy well to be going it a bit. Later, he's to give a bearded blush about it all, explaining it away as "the end of a very long quote".
And now at the end of a very long day, London judges Blood Brothers. The critics rise. They don't wait for the five curtain calls but rush to their type-writers. The popularist Daily Mail's Critic of the Year, Jack Tinker to write: "There are so many good things to shout about and sing about..."; the most influential, The Guardian's Michael Billington, to use that not over used word 'brilliant".
And now at the end of a very long day, London judges Blood Brothers. The critics rise. They don't wait for the five curtain calls but rush to their type-writers. The popularist Daily Mail's Critic of the Year, Jack Tinker to write: "There are so many good things to shout about and sing about..."; the most influential, The Guardian's Michael Billington, to use that not over used word 'brilliant".
The Liverpool continigent in the audience can afford to look smug. It's as if we are all beaming out a message of "Told you so", as we turn the palms of our hands pink with applauding.
And judging by the decibel count that greeted it all, Blood Brothers looks likely to be in business for at least the hoped for year-long run
Andrew Lloyd Webber, who knows a thing or two about musicals, was moved to stand up centre-stalls and shout "Bravo", while on the front row actor Jon Pertwee, guest of Playhouse chairman Carl Hawkins, was heard to mutter 'Marvellous".
Over the past decade The Playhouse, and even more so The Everyman, have put more than a dozen shows into London, either directly or via other reps. But The Playhouse, Britain's oldest repertory company, has never been slap-bang in the middle of the West End map before.
As former chairman Henry Cotton pointed out on arrival, "We've waited 70 years for this." Bill Morrison reckons that such a distinguished track record lies in the fact that in Liverpool shows have always been innovative and involved risks. And how great is that risk now? There are no less than 10 musicals on offer in London right now. These include established favourites, a whole lot of nostalgia (including Yakety Yak, complete with Liverpool's young McGann Brothers) and the traditional format of a show like Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, with former Crossroads star Noele Gordon.
So safety is never assured. But while Blood Brothers has a heavy element of nostalgia, it is probably sufficiently different to last the course. It is not opera, nor pop music, nor old-style American razzamataz.
It is really a folk ballad that's grown out of a morality play which Russell wrote for schools performances on Merseyside. In Liverpool it fitted into the now well established formula of being funny, and local and by a Liverpool writer. It's the same formula that's turned Alan Bleasdale into a national figure of stage and television. And it's also a worrying trend, despite the accolades. For in the cold light of the dawn sun rising over the accounts department, The Playhouse have realised that once they depart from that formula - or more to the point, when they're not selling Russell and Bleasdale - the ceiling caves in.
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, which did only 40 per-cent business in Liverpool, while the same production played to 96 per cent at Watford. Witness also an excellent play like Catherine Hayes' "Skirmishes", also a hit in London and New York, but now being seen by fewer than 50 people on some nights in a restaged production at Williamson Square.
The Playhouse, almost out of embarrassment, point out that the Saturday matinees, traditionally filled up by old ladies with shopping baskets, are doing well. So what? If the theatre hadn't been given a cash transfusion before Christmas, it was on course to sink to the tune of between £120,000 and £150,000.
Even Blood Brothers didn't MAKE money because of the expense of nine musicians for a start. And let it be said that no how should Merseyside County Council be taking a bow. Their level of aid is seriously shy of local authority cash given to other reps, and if Bob Swash hadn't put money into the enterprise, then there would have been no Blood Brothers at all.
As for the London deal, The Playhouse should get one per cent of the gross box-office, which could be £400 a week. Not big money, but welcome when you're up against it back home.
At least with the reviews that count in their favour, the cast are hopeful of posting this pocket money home. "I'm so glad the official opening night is over. I'm feeling very tired, but very happy," said Barbara Dickson with proud mum Janet Dickson (sic) from Southport at her side.
Meanwhile, the question everyone's asking is: "Where do we go from here?"
Bill Morrison says it's going to be harder to get plays done, the criteria will have to be stronger and the material more broadly based. We'll have to go back to story-telling, he concludes.
