LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Blood Brothers: West End
built 214 days ago
Bill Kenwright picked up the rights to the musical in 1987, and a re-vamped Blood Brothers returned to the West End the following year. It was the first West End revival to be nominated for the Best Musical Revival Olivier Award within two years of winning the Original Best Musical production! It transferred from the Albery to the Phoenix four years later in 1991, where it remains today.
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The plot of Blood Brothers centres on two twin brothers, separated at birth when their mother, already with a large brood of children, decides she cannot cope with both. Fate brings the two brothers together at different stages of their lives, despite attempts by their mother to keep them as far apart as possible. With tragic undertones, the pair fall for the same girl but one brother ends up in prison and addicted to anti-depressants, while the other gets a university education and then a high-status job. The truth finally comes out, but too late to avoid a final tragedy.
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The Semi-finalists are: -- "Blood Brothers" focuses on a victim of gay bashing who encounters his attacker years later. -- The children who have witnessed the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan firsthand share their experiences in "Darfur Rising." -- "Ghost Tribes" exposes the plight of Virginian Indians and explains the historical reasons why the federal government refuses to legally recognize their tribes to this day. -- "The Making of a Girl" gives a detailed account of how some abused and neglected children can fall prey to traffickers eager to exploit them for sex and money. -- "One Nation Under Guard" reveals why prisons are emerging as a thriving new industry and ... shines a light on the disproportionate number of African Americans in U.S. prisons. -- The struggle of two gay teens who endured hazing at the hands of classmates -- and were arrested for it -- and who still had the courage to speak out and fight for lasting change is detailed in "We Belong."
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The Blood Brothers musical has become a long-running hit with a cult following. Few people know it started life humbly as a school play and the original incarnation for the London stage ran for only six months, before it was transformed into a West End hit.
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Through interactions between the narrator and the characters, Blood Brothers reaches a quick but powerful climax which holds so much meaning in last words spoken and the placement of every character on stage. The show ends as it started with the Johnstone twins dead and the narrator reprising his opening soliloquy, "Did you ever hear about the Johnstone twins??"
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After a seemingly never-ending stream of energy, which was actually a little over an hour, the Blood Brothers wrapped things up. I figured by then that Blilie and Whitney would have turned their larynxes into undifferentiated cellular masses with their intense vocal stylings, and the whole band would have crumbled into a sweated-out dehydrated mess, but everyone had managed to hang in there to the end.
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