Bill Kenwright's award-winning production of the international smash hit musical, Blood Brothers makes a welcome return to Lighthouse Poole to play a week’s run from Tuesday 7 – Saturday 11 October.
Vivienne Carlyle leads the cast as Mrs Johnstone. Her performance earned her nightly standing ovations in the West End and has garnered widespread acclaim since she joined the national tour last year. Here, she tells us more about the show and her part in it…
For people who are new to the show, what is Blood Brothers all about?
Blood Brothers is by the amazing Willy Russell, who wrote the book and also wrote the music, and it’s about a mother named Mrs Johnstone who is trying to make ends meet. She’s very poor. Her husband leaves her and she’s left with seven children and then discovers she’s pregnant again. When she finds out she’s having twins, Mrs Johnstone confides in her employer Mrs Lyons, who is childless and who persuades her to give her one of the babies. Fast-forward to seven years later, the two boys end up meeting, and it’s about their story as well as their mother’s and how their lives are intertwined even though they’re separated.
They’re brought back together with tragic results, but it’s not just a heartbreaking show. There are huge comedy elements in it and you have adults playing kids, which also strikes the imagination of our younger audiences. You become connected to these characters and then you see them grow up, and you follow on their journey with them. It’s a very interesting piece of theatre and in my opinion one of the best shows I’ve ever performed in.
What do you like about the character of Mrs Johnstone?
I love her strength and her resilience. No matter how hard life is for her and despite her feeling guilt for what she’s done, she still tries to do the best she can with as much grace as she can muster. In spite of everything that happens, she still rises up at the end. I love that and I think it’s a great message for us in life because that’s what we have to do. We’ve all had terrible things happen in our lives and it’s about how we deal with them, recover, move on and live the rest of our lives.
Can you relate to her in any way?
Both of my parents were very encouraging in terms of how when you have a problem you work through it. They set the bar high for me in terms of saying ‘We don’t run away from our problems, we stand up to them, we do the best we can, we keep going and never take no for an answer,’ and all that sort of thing. I was very lucky that they instilled that in me and in that way I can relate to Mrs Johnstone because I think I’m quite strong. I’m a feisty Scot and Mrs Johnstone is a feisty Scouser. She’s a beautiful character to play.
What’s your history with the show and what’s it been like returning to it for the UK tour?
I played Mrs Lyons in 2006, when Maureen Nolan was playing Mrs Johnstone and I was also her understudy so I got to play the lead for my first time back then. In 2007 and 2008, I played Mrs Johnstone for the Scottish dates of the tour, then returned to the role in 2012 for nine months at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Being back in the show now is just amazing and hopefully I’m bringing new things to it. You grow as a person and I feel like a completely different person now. Emotionally I would say I’m tougher in some ways and more vulnerable in others. As an actor, you use your life experiences and try and dig deep. Our director Bob Thomson wants us to be as raw, authentic and as real as we can possibly be.
What makes Mrs Johnstone such an iconic musical theatre character?
She starts out at around age 18, so you get to play this huge arc of a beautiful story and a beautiful journey. Life keeps throwing things at her and she keeps rising. She keeps getting knocked down again but she keeps going. I think that’s what makes Mrs Johnstone so relatable because that’s what we all do. People watching it – and I don’t mean just women, I think it’s the same with men who come to see it as well – go: ‘Well, that’s life, isn’t it?’
How’s the reaction been to the show from audiences on the tour so far?
They laugh, they cry and they are very emotional at the end. It really touches people, a lot of whom come back to see it again. We get a lot of return visitors who have seen the show many times over the years. They come back, they see a different cast and they fall in love with it all over again in a different way.
What’s the nicest bit of feedback you’ve received about it?
One time we were in Skegness and a boy aged around 14 or 15 had been to see it with his school the day before. He brought back his mum and dad the following night, and I was so touched by that because he had felt such a connection to the piece. He was really quite overwhelmed by it and I just felt ‘How fantastic is it that the show is still relevant to this age group when, you know, there’s not a mobile phone in sight and none of the technology that we have today?’ because it starts in the 50s and goes through to the 80s.
Blood Brothers premiered in 1983. Why do you think it has endured for all these years?
I think the story is really unique and gripping, and the characters are very strongly drawn. No matter who you are – whether you’re in your teens, your 30s, your 70s or whatever stage in life you’re at – you’ll come and see the show and there’ll be some character in it that you can connect with. You go on this journey with the person that you connect with the most and it moves you emotionally.
How would you sum up the magic of musical theatre?
Theatre is live, so you immediately connect with it and it’s got that sense of urgency. The stakes are higher when you’re watching something knowing that it’s unraveling in front of you. You can’t press pause, which you can with streaming and things like that. Anywhere there’s live theatre and live music, there’s a level of excitement that you don’t get anywhere else. It’s like coming together as a community and watching something that bonds you. And of course with a musical the emotions are heightened. As a performer, when I’m on stage it’s music that moves me in an almost primal way.
What first sparked your interest in acting as a career?
My dad and gran started an amateur group in Glasgow called The Apollo Players, which is where he met my mum. I was pretty much raised in a trunk. They used to do two shows at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow every year, so I was kind of weaned on musical theatre. One time they were doing Gypsy and I remember sitting in the audience, aged six or seven, listening to the orchestra tune up, then they played the overture and I just started crying. I felt so connected to it.
As for what led to me taking it up as a profession, I’d gone to university thinking that acting was something I’d like to do but never imagining it would happen. Then I was cast as the principal girl in panto at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow, in Babes in the Wood, and that led to other work. I eventually travelled down to London and gave myself three months, vowing ‘If I haven’t got anything within that time, I’m going back to Scotland’. Within two months I was the Narrator on the tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor and three years later made my West End debut with Stephen Gately as Joseph.
Can you pick a few career highlights?
Doing Joseph was really special because it was my West End debut. I was a singer for Cirque du Soleil, which was another highlight, and I was Mother Gothel in Disney’s Tangled: The Musical, where it was great fun playing a villain. And Blood Brothers is really dear to my heart, which is why I’m so happy to be back in the show. I’m just happy to keep working and I hope the roles keep coming in.
:: Blood Bothers runs from Tuesday 7 to Saturday 11 October. Tickets available now at https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/event/blood-brothers-2/
