REVIEW: Blood Brothers: Fabulous theatre. Fabulous songs. Fabulous performances

The brilliance is that we are shown the sheer awfulness of the ending right at the start – and yet that ending when we get round to it for real two hours 50 minutes later still packs the most remarkable punch.

You know it’s coming; in the second half you feel yourself hurtling towards it with grim tragic inevitably, and yet it still shocks you to the core when it arrives. And this no matter how many times you have seen the show before. In fact, if anything, the impact seems ever greater every time you see it.

Blood Brothers really has got very few equals in the world of musical theatre – one of the most gripping and yet gruelling, uplifting and yet heart-breaking, hilarious and yet tragic nights on offer on the stage, the tale of the twins separated at birth only to grow up on opposite sides of the tracks only to meet again with ultimately the most fateful consequences.

Sean Jones has been Mickey for so long that you really can’t imagine anyone else in the role. And nor would you want to. He is perfect across the full range of the role from the sparky, exuberant kid to the broken, despairing man. Jones conveys the immensity and ghastliness of Mickey’s journey with beautiful, haunting poignancy.

Our Eddie is Joe Sleight, and it’s another very fine performance – again the full range as the tragedy looms ever more inescapable on the fast-approaching horizon. Excellent work too from Gemma Brodrick, the best Linda I’ve ever seen. She will break your heart.

All this on top of a powerhouse performance from Vivienne Carlyle as Mrs Johnstone, the tragic mum caught up in an epic battle between nature and nurture, between superstition and class with sheer bad luck thrown into the mix as well. Her conspirator and nemesis Mrs Lyons is played superbly by Sarah Jane Buckley. Great work too from Scott Anson as the Narrator, there to deliver ominousness in spades.

Fabulous theatre. Fabulous songs. Fabulous performances.