Bill Kenwright’s acclaimed production of Willy Russell’s moving musical, Blood Brothers, has hit the road again, and it’s calling in at the Churchill at the end of this month.
A timeless story of international pertinence, it follows Mickey and Eddie, two brothers separated by birth but brought together through an unlikely friendship.
While their life circumstances drag the brothers to opposite ends of the social spectrum, it’s falling in love with the same woman that leads to fatal consequences.
Holly O’Mahony speaks to long-standing cast member Sean Jones, who plays Mickey in the show, about bringing Blood Brothers to life for the last two decades…
“The thing is, I don’t like singing,” Sean tells me, a little sheepishly. It wouldn’t be too extreme a confession, even for an actor, except for the fact Sean has spent the last 24 years touring on and off with one of the most sentimental musicals ever written.
“I’m not even that much of a fan of musicals,” he laughs. Now I’m stumped. How is that even possible, given what he does for a living?
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“Blood Brothers was the first one that really connected with me as a drama student,” he explains. “But I still get incredibly nervous when I have to sing.”
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It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Sean’s favourite number in the show is not one of his own. Nor is it the people’s choice, ‘Tell Me It’s Not True’, which has transcended the world of the show and infiltrated pop-culture through performances on talent contests and covers played on the radio.
“My favourite is ‘Easy Terms’,” he says. “It’s a really beautiful song. When I did the show with Barbara Dickson, I remember her singing it on the first day of rehearsals and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.”
Sean is full of fond memories from his time with Blood Brothers. Having joined the cast in 1999 as a fresh-faced understudy, he was offered the part of Mickey two years later and has played it on and off ever since.
It’s his love of his character, Mickey, as opposed to the musical genre, that keeps him coming back. In his own words: “Every time I’ve gone back, I’ve been reinspired and reinvigorated. I’ve loved the part of Mickey since I was about 20 years old.”
While he’s spent most of that time touring around the country, “when [Blood Brothers] was running concurrently on tour and in the West End, you’d get a call saying they’re desperate and you’d find yourself doing a mad dash down to London to do a couple of shows there. I miss those days really,” he says, nostalgically.
This current ‘spring’ tour, which runs from January until April, is Sean’s farewell tour with the show. He’s already been brought out of ‘retirement’ to play Mickey again once. This time, is he really ready to go? “It’s not like I’m clinging on by my fingernails,” he laughs. “But equally I want to come out on a high, I don’t want to drag it out.”
Still, I point out, audiences will have seen a gradually ageing, or perhaps more mature, portrayal of Mickey over the last 20 years.
“Ageism is the last bit of bigotry which is allowed in our industry,” Sean retorts, fairly. “Who is to say what’s too old? Theatre is all about storytelling. When I run on stage at the beginning, I’m clearly not seven years old. So if I can suspend their belief about being seven I can suspend their disbelief about being 30.”
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In a lighter tone, he adds: “Don’t get me wrong, if I start to hobble around the stage on a zimmer frame, I’d realise it’s time to go. [For now], I seem to still be getting away with it as I have a bit of a baby face.”
If anything, Sean is confident he brings more to the role of Mickey now than he did when he was younger.
“Acting is an interpretive art form, so you interpret the text and try to bring a lot of your own experiences to it, and at my age, there’s a lot I can draw on in terms of emotions,” he reasons. “The older you get, the more dark places you’ve been to.”
Sean is not the only veteran in the Blood Brothers company. Both Tim Churchill, who plays Mr Lyons in the show, and Paula Tappenden, who plays Mrs Lyons, have also been with the production for 20 years. “We’re the three proper oldies of the show now.”
As for the new faces joining the cast, “we’ve got to the point now where some of the people in the show saw me in it on school trips!,” he beams, adding that for some, it was seeing the show as a teenager that made them want to go into acting in the first place.
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Do they ever struggle to pump as much energy into a script and songs they’ve performed thousands of times before? “That’s the weighty responsibility of every long-running show… the importance of [giving each performance our all] is always drilled into us.
“We rely on people to come back and bring their friends or the next generation, so every show has got to deliver,” he says.
Plus, “it sounds pretentious, but each audience is like a brand new individual with a different energy, and that fires us.”
As for what keeps the audience coming back, at the crux of Blood Brothers is a storyline that speaks to audiences regardless of their age or background.
“When you boil it down, it’s about family, loss and bonds. People across the globe can resonate with that,” says Sean.
Indeed, productions of Blood Brothers have been staged all over, from Qatar to Argentina and Thailand, albeit with altered scripts.
Once the tour ends in April, Sean is looking forward to having a little bit of downtime at his home in North Wales, but it won’t be long before he’s back on stage, performing in Jack and the Beanstalk at the Floral Pavilion Theatre in New Brighton. “I’ve been doing it for a few years now, so I’m classed as a resident comic,” he says, proudly.
For now though, his attention is solely on making Blood Brothers shine for new and returning audiences alike, but it’s particularly new school audiences Sean hopes to impress.
“Nobody wrote a play to be read, it’s meant to be performed,” he explains. “Even a show like Blood Brothers can be as boring as maths if you’re just sat there reading it in the classroom. Then suddenly, when they see it being performed, you see their little lightbulbs go on… that’s lovely.”
Blood Brothers is running at the Churchill Theatre, High Street, Bromley BR1 1HA. February 28 – March 4, performances at 7:30pm and additionally 2:30pm on select dates. Admission: £25. www.churchilltheatre.co.uk/Online/tickets-blood-brothers-bromley-2023
