BLOOD BROTHERS AT THE WOLVERHAMPTON GRAND THEATRE
Theatre Run: Monday 29 April - Saturday 4 May 2013
Performanced Reviewed: Monday 29 April (Press Night)
Reviewed by Kyle Pedley
Despite perhaps not being as instantly synonymous as the likes of say Mamma Mia!, Les Miserables or much of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s output, Blood Brothers is undoubtedly one of the big musical success stories of the past few decades both here and overseas, becoming the third longest-running musical production in West End history during it’s London run before embarking on a string of highly successful tours such as the one which this weeks arrives at the Wolverhampton Grand. Based very loosely on the ideas and themes of the Alexandre Dumas novella The Corsican Brothers but transposed to a distinctly English (see: Merseyside) setting and tale, Blood Brothers is a hearty, and indeed weighty, musical experience which brilliantly manages to be both somewhat epic yet also focused and intimate. It brushes upon melodrama, frequently plays with heightened foreboding and artistic ambiguity (in the form of a not altogether-detached narrator), dips into a broad spectrum of ideas and issues both social and psychological, and yet for all of this remains accessible, sincere and for the most part at least, a surprisingly jovial, good-natured and well-paced piece that feels it’s almost three hour running time for all the right reasons. This is heavy, investing yet undeniably entertaining musical theatre that seems to have come via the Les Miserables school of emotional hard knocks, taking you on the tour de force of highs and lows on a grand yet decidedly human yarn populated by believable characters and all-too familiar problems writ large.
