His first play, KEEP YOUR EYES DOWN, was taken by the college drama group to the Edinburgh Fringe in 1972. There it was seen by John McGrath who put Russell in touch with the Everyman. It was an accurate and honest account of the group's rise and fall, culminating in an abortive attempt to stage a reunion concert and its success enabled him to give up teaching and concentrate on writing full-time. The show was notable for the ironic juxtaposition of songs against dialogue, and the sparkling Liverpool humour that has since become his trademark. Russell has strong views on the working classes' attempts to gain access to middle-class culture.
Literature is an invention by the middle-classes for their own benefit.
That's why I write for the theatre, because it's concerned with the spoken rather than the written word. There is a compassionate core in Russell's work that can best be seen in his endearing and sympathetic presentation of life's losers, all of whom have an epic sense of their own importance. Through his writing it is possible to feel a sense of his characters' aspirations and their failed and foiled dreams. However, unlike the characters he creates, Willy Russell doesn't have an epic sense of his own importance. What sustains and characterises his best work is a raging, bitter sense of injustice.