Willy Russell (Author of Educating Rita) edit data William Russell is a British dramatist, lyricist, and composer. His best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers. Willy Russell was born in Whiston, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where he grew up. His parents worked in a book publisher's and often encouraged him to read. After leaving school with one O-level in English, he first became a ladies' hairdresser and ran his own salon. Russell then undertook a variety of jobs, also the first play he wrote was Keep Your Eyes Down Low (1975). His first success was a play about The Beatles called John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert. Originally commissioned for the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool was transferring to the West End in 1974. Educating Rita (1980) concerned a fe William Russell is a British dramatist, lyricist, and composer. His best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers. Willy Russell was born in Whiston, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where he grew up. His parents worked in a book publisher's and often encouraged him to read.

After leaving school with one O-level in English, he first became a ladies' hairdresser and ran his own salon. Russell then undertook a variety of jobs, also the first play he wrote was Keep Your Eyes Down Low (1975). His first success was a play about The Beatles called John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert. Originally commissioned for the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool was transferring to the West End in 1974. Educating Rita (1980) concerned a female hairdresser and her Open University teacher. The semi-autobiographical Educating Rita was turned into a 1983 film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters. The musical Blood Brothers (1983), for which Russell also composed the music, first opened in Liverpool and transferred to London's Phoenix Theatre. It won the best actress award at the Lawrence Olivier awards. Bill Kenwright produced a revival in 1988 which has run for more than twenty years; the show was produced on Broadway in 1993. Shirley Valentine, which first opened in Liverpool in 1986 before a new production opened in London in 1988 starring Pauline Collins.

It was also made into a successful film, in 1989, again with Collins in the title role. Russell received BAFTA and Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for both Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. Russell has also written television projects, including the one-off drama, Our Day Out, which aired in 1977. He penned another television drama, One Summer, which aired as a five-part series on Channel 4 in 1983, starring a young David Morrissey. In 2000, Russell published his first novel, The Wrong Boy. In epistolary form, main character Raymond Marks, a 19-year old from Manchester, tells the story of his life in letters to his hero Morrissey. Russell has written songs since the early 1960s, and has written the music to most of his plays and musicals. He also co-wrote "The Show", the theme song to the 1985 ITV drama series Connie, which became a top 30 hit for vocalist Rebecca Storm. His first album, Hoovering the Moon, was released in 2003.

The Willy Russell Centre for Children and Adults Who Stammer, was opened by Russell in Liverpool, 1996. The centre took Russell's name as his writing in many of his plays puts forward the philosophy that anyone is capable of change whatever obstacles may be in their path, a theory shared by the centre. ...more Willy Russell - Literature Literature Biography Willy Russell was born in Liverpool in 1947. He became a hairdresser on leaving school, then undertook a variety of jobs, also writing songs which were performed in local folk clubs. He also wrote songs and sketches for local radio programmes. At 20 years of age, he returned to college and became a teacher in Toxteth, after which he began to become interested in writing drama. His first play, Keep your Eyes Down, was produced in 1971, and he became well-known after his musical about the Beatles, John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, ran for eight weeks at Liverpool Everyman Theatre. It was transferred to the West End and won the Evening Standard and London Theatre Critic Award for best musical in 1974.

Since then he has written several plays, including Educating Rita (1981), about a working-class woman who decides to study English with the Open University and Shirley Valentine (1988), a housewife who becomes transformed after a holiday in Greece. Both plays were made into films from Willy Russell’s own screenplays starring Julie Walters and Pauline Collins respectively, each winning an Oscar nomination, as did the author for best screenplay. He has also written plays for television, including the well-received Our Day Out (1984). Willy Russell has continued to write songs since the early 1960s. He wrote the lyrics and score for his popular musical Blood Brothers (1986), about a pair of twins separated at birth. The show has been playing in the West End since 1983 and won 3 Best Music Award and one Best Actress Award at the Laurence Olivier Awards. He also wrote the score for Shirley Valentine, and for several other television series and plays. His first album, Hoovering the Moon, was released in 2003. In 2000, Willy Russell published his first novel, The Wrong Boy. It is currently being adapted for television.

He lives and works in Liverpool. Critical perspective Willy Russell’s Rita and Shirley Valentine are two of the most memorable creations of recent decades. Wise, funny and incessantly acerbic, they are irresistible, full of sarcastic zest and a melancholic longing for a different way of life, for new ways of seeing, for alternative expectations from the world around them; they speak to anyone borne without an item from the cutlery tray in their mouth, to those who have lived beyond privilege. Russell is a very British writer; he has the dry wit of Alans Bleasdale and Bennett, the sort of obsession with class and social problems you see in the work of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, the constrained and peculiar sense of wry sentimentality prevalent in much of British writing, and an obvious affection for his characters, evident in everything from Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey to the songs of The Smiths. The standard British writer type - conventional, middle class-upbringing involving tutelage in private or public school of varying prestige, three year attendance at either one of the country’s premier universities, any number of years in waiting before being acclaimed as the new chronicler of London society - is the very opposite of who Russell is.

He left school at the age of 15 with one ‘O’ Level in English language and became a hairdresser. When he was 20, he returned to education and went on to become a teacher. Encouraged by his wife, Russell began to take a fervent interest in theatre and started writing, first songs and later plays. He spent those years usually described as formative in the very opposite of an intellectual environment, and all his work is suffused with a respect for the world of work, with a railing against pretension, and a passionate enthusiasm for ideas. Russell’s work has always been defined by its interest in what he has described as 'the poetry of common speech.' His characters are of the working class, often placed in trying circumstances. Through their actions, Russell derives his essentially warm yet never patronising comedy. He is undoubtedly an optimist; if one were to look for the exact polar opposite of Samuel Beckett the search could stop here. Russell cannot stray from his belief in a certain goodness at the heart of humanity; it is that he is able to communicate this with humour which makes his work so appealing. Without the humour, his work would be mawkish.

With it, it is never less than stirring, and always moving. Shirley Valentine (1988) and Educating Rita (1981) are Russell’s two most successful plays, which also became hit films. Both feature strong female characters and are, in essence, about the need to escape and the desire for self-transformation. Educating Rita was inspired by Russell’s experience of returning to education as a mature student, and uses the Pygmalion myth as source material. It is the tale of brash, spade-is-a-spade Susan White, a hairdresser who decides to call herself Rita and study English at the Open University. Although much of the comedy is derived from her naïve, uncritical responses to the great classics of world literature, none of it condescends to her, and given the air of pomposity that surrounds the study of writers, (implied by the play rather than explicitly stated), Russell leaves us in no doubt that we should be sympathetic towards Rita. That he was able to achieve this is the primary reason for the play’s eternal charm and continued success.

Educating Rita’s emotional punch comes from the desire of its protagonist to free herself from her situation and surroundings, to be more than others imagined she ever could be. The theme of flight, be it from the self, a situation or circumstance, is central to Russell’s other huge theatrical hit, Shirley Valentine. It takes the form of a monologue by a housewife before and after a life-changing Greek holiday, and begins with the now classic address by Shirley to a wall in her kitchen. Bored preparing her husband’s 'chips and egg', she undergoes an epiphany and comes to a new understanding of herself, both emotional and sexual, a self which has been frustrated by years of stagnant routine. Fresh from the success of Educating Rita, Russell was commissioned to write a piece for Merseyside Young People’s Theatre, which visited schools in the area. This eventually became the musical Blood Brothers (1986), described by critic Sheridan Morley as 'undoubtedly the most exciting thing to have happened to the English musical theatre in years.' Blood Brothers is a modern-day prince and the pauper tale about twins born into a poor Liverpool family, only to be separated when their mother realises she cannot afford to keep them both.

When they meet years later, they become great friends, but the story is not to end happily. It all turns on the enternal nature/nurture question, and generates passion in that it taps into our primal need to belong, to form part of a social group. The Wrong Boy (2000), Willy Russell’s first novel, ten years in gestation, is one of the most memorable books of recent years. In Raymond Marks, Russell created a character who is more than ready to stand alongside Rita and Shirley Valentine. In choosing the epistolary form, Russell was able to ease his transition into the world of prose fiction: his first novel is essentially a series of dramatic monologues. Raymond, a 19-year old from Manchester, addresses his letters to his hero Morrissey. He is a natural misfit, and cut from typical Russell cloth. Working class, Northern, full of secret yearnings and longings, desperate to get out yet somehow resigned to being incapable of doing so, he is Rita and Shirley but with an extra dose of the pathetic.

Whereas they possess some central core of inner strength, Raymond is, for much of the time, forever at the mercy of others, outside of control of his own life, misunderstood, drifting into patterns that people seem intent on creating for him. The Wrong Boy is a road movie of a novel, Raymond being en route from Manchester to Grimsby; and it is also a recreation of the past in which Raymond has suffered from misunderstandings so great that they have quite literally blighted his life. It is all written in one defiantly subjective voice. As Raymond takes us back and forth through his own madness we are forced to ask ourselves how much of it is real. The Wrong Boy is heartbreaking, funny, charming and absolutely compelling. However, Russell allows it to fall into too neat a trap at its conclusion, whereby coincidence, and the desire for a heart-warming conclusion contrive to produce an ending that falls into sentimentality. Yet there is something oddly satisfying about this, for so real is Raymond, that you cannot help but long for this kind of denouement, you care so much about him that you almost need the relief of knowing that everything might be all right.

Russell will perhaps forever be the kind of writer written about in vaguely patronising terms by the serious London press. He has been dismissed by some as 'the housewives' choice'. The only thing that can be said is that the housewives of Great Britain have commendable taste. Garan Holcombe, 2005 Shirley Valentine / Educating Rita | Theatre review | Stage | The Guardian Shirley Valentine / Educating Rita Monday 12 April 2010 16.30 EDT First published on Monday 12 April 2010 16.30 EDT Share on Messenger Close It would be easy to dismiss Shirley and Rita as products of a distant age when women's choices were fewer. Easy, but dead wrong, as Rita herself might say. Despite the advances of feminism, the Shirleys and the Ritas are still with us, over 20 years since Willy Russell first wrote about them with an eager and unpatronising vividness. They are, after all, the direct descendents of Ibsen's Nora, slamming the door on their marriages and walking out into the future to discover their real themselves.

However, today's Shirley would probably opt for a breast enlargement and Rita seek empowerment through pole-dancing rather than Shakespeare. But we are back in the 1980s, so Shirley heads for Greece where she blooms like a flower in the sun, and Rita for the university library where English literature is her nutrient-rich mulch. There is a touch of Billy Elliot about Rita, with Blake standing in for ballet; a hint of Arnold Wesker's Beatie Bryant, too. "My life has been a crime because I didn'tlive it properly," declares Shirley talking of the unused, untended part of herself. "I want to find myself," cries Rita with evangelical zeal. Shirley's husband, Joe, and Rita's husband, Denny, are the same "stranger" that Tovald is to Nora. Men are defined by their absence even when they are actually present: Shirley's kitchen wall, with whom she converses, is rather more animated than Larry Lamb's alcoholic university tutor, Frank, in Educating Rita, the perky two-hander directed in slightly stuttering fashion by Jeremy Sams.

The Menier's Willy Russell season offers an opportunity to see both plays, once the staple of every cash-strapped regional rep, in tandem. It's like one big girls'-night-out: warming, soothing and at times raucous and invigorating, if not entirely life-changing. Russell is that rare writer who can make cliches seem new-minted and, in Shirley Valentine at least, has a direct conduit to the bruised but hopeful heart that we all carry around with us. But there is always a cosiness about Russell's easy facility with jokes (the monologue that is Shirley Valentine is pretty much a theatricalised standup set, directed with efficiency by Glen Walford) with Shirley's observations on her marriage ("It's like the Middle East, there are no solutions") and Rita's literary pronouncements ("Howard's End: 100% total crap"; "TS Elliot. His poems are dead long") always playing directly to gallery. However, the real pleasure of these revivals lie in the portrayals of Shirley and Rita: Meera Syal and Laura Dos Santos fall joyously upon their roles like starving lionesses surprised by an unexpected abundance of meat.

The actress tells Kate Kellaway how she went from Granny Kumar to Shirley Valentine… and won a role in the new Dr Who Published: 27 Mar 2010 Willy Russell: Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine... Commissioned by the Everyman Theatre. The play premiered in Liverpool in 1986, directed by Glen Walford. Shirley Valentine opened in the West End in 1988 directed by Simon Callow and produced by Bob Swash. It went onto Broadway during 1990, marking Willy Russell's Broadway debut. This production starred Pauline Collins, who like Julie Walters in Educating Rita, went on to play Shirley in the film version. Shirley Valentine takes the form of a monologue by a housewife before and after a transforming holiday in Greece. Shirley's a middle-aged Liverpool housewife, who finds herself talking to the wall while she prepares her husband's chips 'n' egg, wondering what happened to her life. She compares scenes in her current life with what she used to be like and feels she's stagnated and in a rut.

But when her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid vacation to Greece for two, she leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband, packs her bags and heads for the sun. The note on the kitchen table reads "Gone to Greece back in two weeks." Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light. With Shirley Valentine, Willy developed a new style of writing - the one woman show. When first created, Shirley Valentine was a two act play created for one voice. In the first act Shirley is at home, in her kitchen and talking to her wall. In the second act she is in Greece on holiday and talks instead to a rock on the beach she visits each day. "It is a simple and brilliant idea...the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone - in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving." Michael Coveney, Financial Times.

"On reflection I find it hard to fathom how someone as superstitious as myself could have agreed that in the event of Noreen ever being off, I would go on and read the text....." Willy Russell Shirley Valentine; Educating Rita | Theatre review | Culture | The Guardian Shirley Valentine; Educating Rita Share on Messenger Close The Willy Russell double bill at the Menier Chocolate Factory is a treat. Meera Syal is irresistible as Shirley Valentine: warm, communicative and bittersweet. She has the audience eating out of her hand, which is probably preferable to sampling the egg n'chips she fries for her husband in the first act (you worry about the fire risk as, talking 19-to-the-dozen to her kitchen wall, she sees the whole meal through, apparently on autopilot, from two raw potatoes and a couple of uncooked eggs). Between acts, a stagehand sprays air-freshener liberally around her kitchen – and at us. What is so lovely is Syal's animation as middle-aged Shirley, who feeds her husband, waters her spider plants and does a runner, invited by her friend Trish on a fortnight's holiday in which she will swap grease for Greece.

At the press matinee, when Shirley reappeared on the beach in sexy silk and hot pants, there was a collective gasp of pleasure – as if the audience were sponsoring her transformation. Yet what Syal brings out so movingly is that Shirley is undeceived about her affair with kindly Kostas from the local taverna. She explains: "The only holiday romance I've had is with myself." Willy Russell's play – immortalised by Pauline Collins on screen – is more than 20 years old, yet it is, spryly directed by Glen Walford, as fresh as Shirley Valentine herself. Educating Rita, first performed in 1980, also retains its charm (though less certainly in places) in an adroitly cut, 90-minute version directed with flair by Jeremy Sams. Larry Lamb convinces as Frank, a genial, condescending, disappointed professor who hides his whisky behind literary classics. When Rita arrives in his life, she intoxicates him in a new way. His mouth drops open repeatedly – like an amazed goldfish. Rita educates him. But she cannot make him interesting (he is such a poor advertisement for Eng Lit).

Laura Dos Santos catches Rita's garrulous curiosity perfectly. She combines innocence and experience – she does not need William Blake. Or does she? (Russell's underlying question about what education is for is as relevant as ever.) What an invigorating delight it is to see these plays together – female companion pieces – with their linked messages about two women finding ways to become themselves. The actress tells Kate Kellaway how she went from Granny Kumar to Shirley Valentine… and won a role in the new Dr Who Published: 27 Mar 2010 Interview with Willy Russell: As Educating Rita returns home to Liverpool for its 35th birthday | Terri Paddock Interview with Willy Russell: As Educating Rita returns home to Liverpool for its 35th birthday By Terri Paddock |13 February 2015| Terri's Blog , Theatrical | Leanne Best and Con O’Neill in Educating Rita at the Liverpool Playhouse My former Northwest Editor at WhatsOnStage.com, Glenn Meads, recently met up with Willy Russell, whose iconic play Educating Rita has “come home” to Liverpool Playhouse this month to celebrate its 35th birthday.

The anniversary production of Russell’s two-hander is directed by Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse artistic director Gemma Bodinetz and stars native Liverpudlians Leanne Best as Rita and Con O’Neill as her tutor Frank, who, according to Russell, are “electric” together. O’Neill is a Russell veteran; he won an Olivier for Blood Brothers, and has also starred in One for the Road and the film Dancin’ Thru the Dark, an adaptation of Stags and Hens. Let me hand over to my guest contributor Glenn to tell you more… A common thread in Willy’s work is that many of his characters are seeking something. Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers wants far more than “Easy Terms”. She hopes that a new home will bring her inner peace, Shirley Valentine’s quest takes her to a Greek island, and Rita experiences the thrill that newfound knowledge can give a person with working-class roots. In Russell’s own life, his journey of seeking is similar to Rita’s. But who was his Frank? Who acted as his mentor, encouraging him to write? “It wasn’t a formal teacher,” he tells me. “My father-in-law (Michael Seagrott) was a librarian at Hornsea Library.

He’d gone as far as he could go and then started lecturing. He opened up my mind and gave me the confidence to go searching for myself. He had that ‘Frank-like’ effect that Rita experiences. And I wrote Educating Rita in Michael’s library.” Local vs parochial Gemma Bodinetz and Willy Russell in rehearsals for Educating Rita One of the main things you take away from an encounter with Russell is how he still has the ability to speak the truth and not just on the page. He retains a particular fearlessness when it comes to waving the flag for regional theatre. “The per capita spend on the arts is £70+ pounds [in London] and here it’s £5.60.” What kind of balance is that? As Russell is returning to the Playhouse, I wonder, does he have a view on how a regional theatre can please locals, whilst at the same time attracting new audiences?

He does: “Theatres need to set their stall out… Do the work you want to do but build up a relationship with your audience.” “I remember saying we have two National Theatres, one’s on the South Bank and one’s the rest of the country” That sounds like sage advice, but wasn’t it always thus? Or has something changed? Russell’s career really took off in 1974, after various student productions, a BBC radio play and an Alan Plater adaptation, he was commissioned to write Beatles-inspired musical John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert, which premiered at the Liverpool Everyman and transferred to the West End, where it scooped both the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards for Best Musical. He recalls of those early years: “We had producing theatres and audiences craved new work. I remember saying we have two National Theatres, one’s on the South Bank and one’s the rest of the country.” Of course, then as now, new work is risky and, if what you stage is “perceived as a flop, your neck is on the chopping block.” Presumably, he rates the likelihood of Gemma Bodinetz’s neck being chopped pretty low.

Bodinetz has been running the twinned venues, the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, since 2003. Russell approves: “Gemma has stayed the course and forged a contract with her audience.” The result in considering Bodinetz’s programming, which this year includes in-house productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Arthur Miller’s The Hook? “The audience can take on board the whole season and find a common thread.” On the topic of regional plays for regional audiences, Russell explains: “I’ve never been a fan of beating the local tool. Something parochial makes a lesser play. Don’t pander to the people. Plays need to be universal.” Blood Brothers ran for more than 24 years in London’s West End Blood Brothers on the big screen One of Willy’s most successful pieces is not a play, but a musical, drawing on his talent for writing not only words but music. I’m talking, of course, of Blood Brothers, for which Russell penned the book, the music and the lyrics. The nature-vs-nurture musical, centering on twins separated at birth, was originally written as a play for a Merseyside school.

Like so many Russell hits, Blood Brothers had its professional premiere at Liverpool Playhouse, then transferred to London in 1984. It became one of the West End’s longest runners, extending for 24 years, long after Con O’Neill hung up his shoes as Mickey. Though it finally shuttered in November 2012 at the Phoenix Theatre, where it had been resident since 1991, there’s still talk of a West End comeback and the show is currently on another UK tour. “If anyone in America wants to fund the Blood Brothers movie, we’ll take the call!” With the success of Les Miserables and Into the Woods, currently in cinemas, why has this slice of Liverpool life in the form of a Greek tragedy (with music!) never made it to the big screen? According to Russell: “it’s far easier to get something on stage. You do have power in theatre as you can put up a set and bang bang.” As far as a Blood Brothers movie being mooted: “There was the possibility of doing a cheap, almost punk version of it – a British movie.

I and Alan Parker didn’t like it, so we wrote the full musical version.” But before you get excited, Russell warns: “It would cost $40 million, and to break even, you would need to recoup $120 million. And you would need to have American money.” He jokes: “If anyone in America wants to fund it, we’ll take the call!” [Editor: Any rich Americans reading this????] Harvey Fierstein wanted to play Shirley Valentine… Just imagine! This is not to say that American writers or producers never come knocking. Harvey Fierstein approached Russell about staging Shirley Valentine with Fierstein himself in the title role of the unhappy housewife seeking solace in Greece. [Spot the much fewer than six degrees of separation: Fierstein wrote the book for the musical of Kinky Boots, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical now transferring to the West End’s Adelphi Theatre in September, which is based on the film by Tim Firth, a one-time singing partner of Willy’s…] Would Fierstein’s version have been Sherman Valentine? And how about a gender reversal take on Rita too?

“It could be Educating Peter,” Russell says [I was thinking Educating Richard or Educating Ryan… though the latter probably sounds too much like Saving Private Ryan] before he remembers that Radio 4 did this as parody. “It could be about a man’s return to education, but not to seek something new or to look avant garde,” he concludes. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Advice for the young I ask Russell to play teacher himself and help educate young people interested in pursuing a career as a writer. What advice would he give them? “Don’t expect a living,” he fires back, and then adds: “Write yourself stupid.” In his own “write yourself stupid for whatever you can get” youth was that aforementioned Alan Plater adaptation that preceded John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert. Plater’s The Tigers Are Coming became Russell’s When the Reds, starring a very young Antony Sher at the Everyman in Liverpool.

“When they gave me £30, I couldn’t believe it!” Writers, says Russell, must be “artists” and “mavericks”, with always the work rather than money as the ultimate “reward.” What does he think about so many young people today ditching arts-based courses in favour of more vocational subjects? “It’s depressing. University education is supposed to be just that; universal, educating the whole person. If you go for an interview, they’re not interested in what your degree is in; they’re interested in a fully rounded education.” In praise of education: Leanne Best and Con O’Neill in Educating Rita at Liverpool Playhouse Returning to Rita… again Russell could just sit back and let Bodinetz’s production carry on without him, but he prefers to be hands on without being too imposing. “I have been commenting on this play for 35 years now so I don’t want to stifle anyone’s first-time experience,” he says. “Someone struggling to find something better is universal.” Audiences have had ample opportunities for first-time experiences of Rita over the years. Leaving aside the 1983 film starring Julie Walters and Michael Caine [is it on Netflix?

It should be], there have been frequent stage revivals, including, in London, Jeremy Sams’ acclaimed 2010 Menier Chocolate Factory revival. Part of a “Willy Russell season”, it transferred to the West End’s Trafalgar Studios in a double bill with a Meera Syal-led Shirley Valentine. Why does a play premiered in 1980 still resonate with audiences in 2015? Russell returns to his point about universality: “Someone struggling to find something better is universal. Some people say that education is no longer seen as a route to something and that young people look to The X Factor instead, but I think that’s not true. It’s just a headline.” He believes that, in Bodinetz’s revival, “the truth of the play beats as loud and as eloquently as it ever did.” And he’s highly complimentary of Leanne Best and Con O’Neill. “The electricity between them is sensational,” he says, and then, reminiscently, adds, “the two of them remind me of Julie Walters and Mark Kingston [who originated the roles of Rita and Frank onstage]”.

Speaking to Russell, you hear Rita’s voice – like her, he left the world of hairdressing behind long ago for an unpredictable but fulfilling exploration of life through writing. But while Rita reads great writers’ work, Russell is the great writer; sharpening his pencil as a seasoned wordsmith and still loving every minute. Educating Rita opened on 6 February 2015 at the Liverpool Playhouse, where it continues until 7 March. Russell’s iconic play is also revived this month at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, directed by Patrick Sandford. The Colchester production stars Samantha Robinson and Dougal Lee as Rita and Frank. It runs 26 February to 14 March 2015. Peggy Ramsay, my original agent Landmark productions Educating Rita – 1980: Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy Blood Brothers – 1983: Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical Shirley Valentine – 1988: Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you have done? Whatever it was, unless it had some kind of artistic expression, it would have been deeply depressing.

So probably performing in some way, I may have acted. Do you have any writing rituals? When I’ve got to start a new piece, I do not go to my usual place of work until I get it right. For more on Willy Russell, visit Willy Russell: 1970's Playwright pages CONTINUE to the 1980s Playwright... Willy Russell is one of the most successful playwrights of his generation. His plays have been performed in countries across the globe and have won countless appreciation and creative awards as well as academic honours for their author. Since their premiers plays such as Educating Rita, Stags and Hens, Shirley Valentine, Breezeblock Park and Our Day Out have been in constant production throughout the world. We present these pages in the form of a timeline which, although under the heading of PLAYWRIGHT, shows all of Willy Russell's work including films, novels and significant moments in his career. During the 1970's... Willy Russell wrote ground breaking tv drama and stage plays, including Our Day Out (still used as a teaching resource in schools today), the award-winning musical John, Paul, George, Ringo & Bert...

which began a long creative association with Barbara Dickson, Breezeblock Park, One for the Road, Stags & Hens and wrote the stage play Educating Rita, which was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and later turned into a film. PLAYGROUND Also produced at St Katherine's College. With KEEP YOUR EYES DOWN and SAM O SHANKER this formed the triple bill, BLIND SCOUSE first produced at St. Katherine's College and then at the Edinburgh Fringe - The Rifle Lodge, Broughton Terrace. The production was seen and admired in Edinburgh by John McGrath who was then instrumental in getting Willy his first professional commission for the Liverpool Everyman Company, then under the directorship of Alan Dossor. 1973 'WHEN THE REDS' Adapted from Alan Plater's play, 'The Tigers Are Coming.' Produced at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Directed by Pam Brighton and featuring amongst the cast a young Bernard Hill and even younger Anthony Sher. "Even at the time and without the benefit of hindsight one knew just what an extraordinary company of actors Alan Dossor had assembled.

As well as Bernard Hill and Tony Sher there was Jonathan Price, Alison Steadman, George Costigan, Trevor Eve, Liz Estensen, Philip Joseph, Matthew Kelly, Pete Postlethwaite, Julie Walters, Bill Nighy......awesome really." KING OF THE CASTLE A television play produced by BBC Birmingham as part of the Second City Firsts season. Transmitted 12th November 1973. TAM LIN A musical play for children, produced at Dovecot Primary School. Book Lyrics and Music by Willy Russell SAM O'SHANKER A greatly reworked musical version of this play. Commissioned by Vanload, the Everyman Theatre Touring Company. This play toured pubs, clubs and community centres. 1974 DEATH OF A YOUNG YOUNG MAN Drama about a trio of youngsters suspended from school and the problems they then face. Broadcast as a part of the Play For Today series produced by BBC Birmingham. JOHN PAUL GEORGE RINGO ... and BERT Commissioned and directed by Alan Dosser for Liverpool's Everyman Theatre where it opened in May 1974. The production transferred to the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London in August.

It ran for a year and won both the Evening Standard and London Critics' awards for Best Musical of 1974. Two major tours followed the West End run. The soundtrack with Barbara Dickson and the London cast was released on RSO records. BREAK IN Produced for BBC Schools television programme Scene. CANTRIL TALES The Cantril Tales was a Christmas production at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre as part of the celebrations of the theatre’s 10th anniversary. It was an adaptation of the format of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and made up of a collection of pieces by different writers, including Willy Russell, George Costigan, Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Henri, Rick Juckes, C.G. Bond, Peter Postlethwaite & Nick Stringer. It was assembled by Willy Russell, directed by Jonathan Pryce and featured Nicholas Woodeson, Peter Postlethwaite, Nick Stringer, Rowena Parr, Matthew Kelly, David Peart, Katherine Fahy, Bill Nighy, Julie Walters. 1975 BREEZEBLOCK PARK Commissioned and directed by Alan Dosser for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre.

A new production of this play was directed by Alan Dosser for the Mermaid Theatre, London in August 1977, which transferred to the Whitehall Theatre in September of the same year. 1976 'I READ THE NEWS TODAY' BBC Schools radio production OUR DAY OUT 'I still watch it today. The performances are exquisite. Shot on 16mm in just three weeks by a first time director working with a largely untrained cast it just seemed to be one of those charmed ventures in which everything just fell into place. A great bonus, for me, is the understated but stunning Nic Jones version of Teddy Bears Picnic over the final credits.' First performed at Manchester Contact Theatre where it was originally advertised as TUPPERWARE MAN. Following legal threats from the Tupperware Company, however, the title was changed to PAINTED VEG AND PARKINSON for its opening in November, directed by Caroline Smith. 1977 A two part film for BBC Schools television programme Scene. 1978 Willy Russell interview - Telegraph Willy Russell interview The playwright's two greatest creations, Rita and Shirley, are returning to the stage.

A personable presence: Willy Russell Photo: PAUL GROVER Julie Walters in Educating Rita Photo: REX Tom Conti and Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine Photo: REX By Jasper Rees 10:44AM GMT 24 Mar 2010 No one understands escapism like Willy Russell. Either side of 1980, he wrote two plays about working-class Liverpool women in flight from a humdrum existence. In one, a young hairdresser seeks fulfilment through a literary education with the Open University. In the other, a middle-aged housewife has an island-holiday romance. As films, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine earned Oscar nominations for, respectively, Julie Walters and Pauline Collins. As plays, they have barely been off the stage in productions all over the world. The Menier Chocolate Factory is shrewdly reviving the pair of them in rep. With new actresses – Meera Syal as Shirley and Laura dos Santos as Rita – will they still stand up? The omens are certainly good.

In November, Melanie Chisholm, formerly known as Sporty Spice, joined the cast of Blood Brothers, the musical with words and tunes by Russell which has been parked in the West End for 20 years. The moving tale of brothers separated at birth reduced hardened critics to fresh pools of tears. No wonder Russell tells writers’ groups to forget film and stick to theatre. “I wrote Rita for £700 for 18 nights of performance in the Warehouse – now the Donmar,” he says. “I wrote Shirley for £1,500 for a three-week run at the Everyman. I wrote Blood Brothers for Merseyside Theatre Company for £500 to play in schools in the Liverpool area. I don’t sit down every time to make money. But if you get it right, a play will always make more money than a movie will.” Getting it right is the hard part. Although he claims not to write autobiographically, there’s no point in discounting the circumstances of Russell’s early life as the fuel for his success. He attributes, for example, his ability to inhabit the minds of female characters to a matriarchal upbringing after the war.

Related Articles Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine at the Menier Chocolate Factory 09 Apr 2010 “Men worked three shifts a day. My granny ran a mobile grocer’s on the estate, and often women getting together don’t think that the kids are listening. You aren’t necessarily through your ears, but through your pores.” He had further exposure when he left school at 15 with one O level in English and became a ladies’ hairdresser. “I was a very bad hairdresser. The trade I managed to attract was because people could talk at me. Thinking back now, I was probably doing shampoos-and-sets for some women at the first stage of dementia. I can think of two or three. They would come in every week and tell me the same story about their husbands or the distant past. Some of that must have had a bearing on me later, at least feeling confident to write about women.” Russell, trimly bearded and dapper, is a personable presence. Just don’t stick him in a roomful of blokes. “I can’t do male company. It all becomes about the latest car: 'Did you really come down the A6?’ It’s about things.

Put a group of women in a room and it’s about what’s in here.” He points to his heart. With Shirley, it was as if he was the ventriloquist’s dummy from the moment she opened her mouth. “I wrote the line, 'I like a glass of wine when I’m doing the cooking.’ Then she turned around and said, 'Don’t I, wall?’ And at that moment the play was born. And you knew immediately that’s how she survived. When I was writing her, I became witty. I remember when I wrote, 'He kissed me stretch marks’, and then she suddenly said, 'Aren’t men full of s---?’ And I fell off the chair laughing. It wasn’t as if I knew where I was going when I wrote that riff. I was just the conduit.” Russell made Rita a hairdresser because it meant he wouldn’t have to research her job. He realised only 10 years later that the entire play might have been called “Educating Willy”. At 21, he had gone back to do his O levels out of a sudden hunger to acquire an education. He joined a class of 16 year-olds. “I was a Martian.

They thought I was a CIA plant. This was in the days before 'mature student’ was commonplace as a term. It had been playing for a long time when I realised it’s just glaringly autobiographical. Had I been aware of it, that would have prevented me from writing.” He became a teacher, but within a year was writing professionally full time. His first big hit was a play about the Beatles. Premiered at the Liverpool Everyman in 1974, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert was, in effect, the first jukebox musical. The play fed on Russell’s presence at the birth of Beatles, whom he reckons he saw at the Cavern up to 80 times. “The first night I stood there and saw the Beatles, being in a stinking, sweaty club with the smell of rotting fruit and perfume mixed together, seeing these four geezers who didn’t give a ----, you knew that the world had changed, that nothing could ever be the same. The example was there.” Years later he worked on an unmade script with Paul McCartney. At the time, he never came close to meeting them.

“The nearest I got was I remember John opened his Coke and spilled it over me and I apologised.” Of the Liverpool writers who emerged in the Seventies, Russell can be seen as a soft-centred McCartney to Alan Bleasdale’s more abrasive Lennon. But the comparison with the author of Boys from the Blackstuff is overworked, he insists. “Alan and I both say we are immensely different writers from Liverpool, are fairly tall men who once taught and have beards.” Where Bleasdale slipped across to television, Russell stuck to the theatre. He doesn’t feel he belongs on film sets. He was lucky enough to be there for the final scene of Rita when Walters’s Rita, off to America, was bidding farewell to her whisky-sodden tutor Frank. “I remember [the director] Lewis Gilbert saying to Michael Caine, 'Grab Rita and give her a real full kiss.’ I said, ’No, no!” In a story about unspoken romance, disaster was averted. The Willy Russell season begins previews at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 (020 7907 7060), on Friday.

Shirley Valentine/Educating Rita, Menier Chocolate Factory, London | The Independent Shirley Valentine/Educating Rita, Menier Chocolate Factory, London Feminism with lashings of fun Monday 12 April 2010 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture The disappearing case of Willy Russell is one of the mysteries and frustrations of the British theatre. A revival on the same bill of two of his best known plays – Shirley Valentine dates from 1986, Educating Rita, an RSC commission, from 1980 – renowned for entertaining film versions starring Pauline Collins and Julie Walters, is a chill reminder that the man who also wrote book, lyrics and music for the perennial Blood Brothers hasn't written a new stage play since. You can hardly complain, though, when you meet a performance as good as that of Meera Syal as Shirley, finding her life beyond the kitchen wall on a Greek island where the boatman kisses her stretch marks and she learns how to tap into all that life that's lying around unused. Russell was always a gifted folk dramatist with a lovely turn of phrase and a rare ability to express working class aspirations without sounding middle class or patronising.

Which is why the audience turning up at the Menier might not be the ideal one. Metropolitan sophisticates don't need telling about the virtues of social mobility and self-improvement, do we? But it's the way that he writes so truthfully and wittily about his scouse ladies that makes these short plays such bubbles of delight. And Meera Syal nails Shirley with a wonderfully moving grace and affection, taking us through her catch-ups with Marjorie Majors in the Adelphi Hotel (Marjorie's a hooker, not an air hostess, it turns out) and her condescending neighbour Gillian (who begrudges her the breath to speak with) while cooking her dumb husband's egg and chips for his tea. Laid out on the Greek beach, Shirley has exchanged her confessional kitchen wall – where she's a sort of Saint Joan of the fitted units, evoking her voices to prove she's still alive – for the uncomplicated granite of a sympathetic rock. The brilliance of the monologue lies in this idea that Shirley can only communicate by not communicating, ie chattering on to herself, or the rock.

And, as the Bee Gees' song has it, it's all about staying alive, or coming alive in a fuller way, that gives Shirley's chat its power and resonance, not just the fact that she had sex with old Costas, though that helped things along. Syal's acting, beautifully pointed and measured in Glen Walford's production, delivers a perfectly structured human comedy. The movie opened out a story that belongs in Shirley's head, and the intimacy of the theatre; the encounter in Educating Rita between a 29-year-old hairdresser and a washed-up tutor and failed poet, on the other hand, benefited big time from the film treatment, and made it the budding romcom the play is bursting to be and still feels like within the confines of its short, snappy scenes. Director Jeremy Sams has trimmed and tightened the piece, not always to its advantage, but he's also ensured two deft and vividly articulated performances from Larry Lamb as the lost tutor – much more than a mere sounding board; a walking example of his own mixed-up approach to life and literature – and Laura Dos Santos as Rita. She recently played the same role on BBC Radio opposite Bill Nighy.

Both plays are given a detailed, full value design by Peter McKintosh and restore a much-missed voice of humanity and common sense to our stage. If feminism meant anything at all in the fringe theatre of the 1980s, it meant these two plays by a male dramatist who, rather like David Hare, loves women so much because he understands them so well. And you could imagine a different, epic triple bill altogether – of Educating Rita, David Mamet's Oleanna (these two have been paired before) in repertoire with Hare's own Skylight: about time to bring that one on, I think. To 8 May (020 7907 7060; Menierchocolatefactory.com) More about: Russell, Willy - Drama Online Bloomsbury Publishing Type: Text A compelling story of friendship, loyalty and fate, Blood Brothers is one of the longest-running and most successful ever West End musicals, as well as one of the most moving. Twin brothers are separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both; one of them is given away to a wealthy woman, the other remains with his mother.

They become friends and swear to be blood brothers, all the time unaware of their true fraternity. But as they grow older, the two brothers find they can no longer ignore the class difference that divides them, and the love triangle that has dominated their lives erupts into a quarrel. The staggeringly emotional climax of the play questions whether it was destiny, or the inevitable difference of class, that led to the fatal conflict of two brothers who were once so close. Blood Brothers was first performed at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1983. One of the most-produced writers of his time, Willy Russell (b. Whiston, Liverpool, 23 Aug. 1947) is a playwright and songwriter. He has written a large number of highly successful plays and musicals for stage and TV including John, Paul, George, Ringo ...

and Bert (1974), Breezeblock Park (1975), One for the Road (1976), Our Day Out (television 1977; stage musical version 1983), Stags and Hens (1978; filmed as Dancin' thru the Dark, 1990), Educating Rita (1979), Blood Brothers (1981; musical version 1983), and Shirley Valentine (1986). His novel, The Wrong Boy, was published to great acclaim in 2000. Related

Question: Which Willy wrote the plays Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine?
Answer: Willy Russell