As part of the GCSE Music and Drama Courses, our students get the opportunity to experience live theatre with a variety of performances. The most recent one took place at the Theatre Royal in Norwich.
Byron Johnson, Year 11, is studying Drama and tells us all about this trip:
‘This is third production I’ve seen in Norwich with the School, after going to watch ‘Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night’ and ‘Woman in Black’. This time round we went to watch ‘Blood Brothers’. There are a number of plays and musicals we study in Drama, some of which we perform and some that we have to write about. Blood Brothers is one that write about, completing a theatre review as part of the final exam.
I already had an idea about the plot for Blood Brothers, having studied it in our Year 9 Drama lessons, however in Year 10 we then went into much more depth. We’d previously watched clips of people performing parts of the show, however seeing the whole show completely live really brought the story to life and gave a clearer understanding of what was going on.
Blood Brothers starts off at the end of the story, which is perhaps a bit confusing, however it then goes on to tell the story and how it got to that point. It’s about a mother who is very poor, pregnant with twins. Once they are born, she has to give one of them away. Later in life the twins meet, however they don’t realise they are brothers. Mickey and Eddie eventually find out they are born on the same day and make a pact to become ‘blood brothers’. Their different upbringings take the twins to opposite ends of the social spectrum with one being a lawyer and the other unemployed. They end up falling in love with the same girl and sadly the story culminates in Mickey accidently shooting Eddie and the police shooting Mickey. The overriding theme of the musical is about the classes, being able to interact with each other.
I really liked the production because quite quickly it felt like we knew the characters and their back story. You could feel quite empathetic for their situation too. The actors were great, they portrayed the characters well. As adults, they were having to play the roles of the characters when they were children too, which was quite interesting to watch. If Blood Brothers came to Norwich again, I would definitely go and see it.
Thank you to Miss Breeze and Miss Brooks for organising another great trip!’
 
