Blood Brothers (Grades 9–1) York Notes

Willy Russell presents friendship as a very important idea in the play and as an important part of two of the main characters’ lives. Mickey and Edward are best friends from the age of seven until they are eighteen when it all goes wrong.

Mickey and Edward meet for the first time when they are seven years old in Act One. They become good friends straight away and decide to become blood brothers when they find out they have the same birthday. Mickey says Edward is his ‘best friend’ and they have lots of things in common, like they both enjoy swearing and playing with guns which shows how similar they are but they don’t realise that they are actually real brothers even though the audience knows.

However, Edward and Mickey are very different because their mum gave Edward away and now he thinks Mrs Lyons is his mum. Edward is very impressed with Mickey because he knows some swear words. Edward says he will look it up in the dictionary but Mickey does not know what a dictionary is. This shows that Edward comes from an educated family background but Mickey comes from a poorer background where he has learned swear words at a very young age.

Russell shows how similar and how different the two twins are for most of the play. For example, they both get suspended from their schools when they are fourteen for refusing to cooperate with their teachers. These two things happen separately but are shown at exactly the same time in the play which suggests that there are some very strong connections between the lives of Mickey and Edward. However, there is a very great difference between their backgrounds. Mickey goes to a secondary modern which was a school that less intelligent children had to go to if they were not clever enough to get into grammar school. This shows that Mickey was not very good at schoolwork. Edward on the other hand goes to a private boarding school which shows how much money Mr and Mrs Lyons have got and how different they are to Mrs Johnstone.

Russell really shows how big these differences are when the twins get to the age of eighteen. Edward goes off to university and Mickey gets a job making cardboard boxes in a factory. This shows the different kinds of futures and opportunities that the rich and poor had when the play was written and how much it affects their lives. When Edward comes back from university he can’t understand why Mickey is so upset about having no money. Mickey says Edward is ‘still a kid’ because he can’t understand: ‘beat it before I hit y’, and that’s pretty much the last time they speak to each other until right at the end of the play. It shows how being an adult changes everything and can end friendships.

After that Edward has an affair with Linda when Mickey won’t give up his anti-depressant pills after he comes out of prison and he gets him a new job and a new house but Mickey knows how that happened and is really angry with Linda for arranging it. This shows that Edward is really selfish and not Mickey’s friend anymore because that’s not how friends should behave. When he finds out about the affair, Mickey shoots Edward which is really sad because they were once such great and inseparable friends but Mickey’s life and all the bad things that have happened to him have driven them apart.