Our Day Out - Willy Russell

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Our Day Out is a NEED to see/read play if you are from Liverpool or the surrounding areas.

If you are not you perhaps won't really find it AS amusing... But just go and see/read it anyway and see what you think.  ... more

I have an affinity with Willy Russell as he was born in the same hospital as me In Whiston !!! I also saw one of his earlier plays about the Beatles (John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert) in The Everyman Theatre in Liverpool.

It is hard to say which of his plays he is best known for - personally I would say 'Blood Brothers' but others may go for 'Educating Rita' or 'Shirley Valentine'.

It is very hard to choose as all his work is full of his wonderful 'scouse' wit.

Russell's works so far have been :-

• Keep Your Eyes Down on the road (play 1971)
• Sam O'Shanker (Play 1972, musical 1973)
• Blind Scouse (1972)
• John, Paul, George, Ringo ...and Bert (musical 1974)
• Death of a Young Man (play 1974)
• Breezeblock Park (play 1975)
• Our Day Out (made-for-TV film 1976, musical stage version, 1983)
• One for the Road (play 1976)
• I Read The News Today (BBC Schools Radio Play, 1976)
• Stags and Hens (1978 play and film)
• Educating Rita (play 1980, film 1983)
• One Summer (TV series 1983)
• Blood Brothers (musical 1983, still running)
• Connie (TV series, co-wrote theme tune "The Show" 1985)
• Shirley Valentine (play 1986, film 1989)
• Terraces (BBC TV film 1993)
• The Wrong Boy (first novel, 2000)
• Hoovering The Moon (2003)

This review is about 'Our Day Out'.Willy Russell was commissioned by the BBC to write this play for television, he wrote the play in an incredible five days.The themes of the play Day Out are the lack of education, lack of opportunity and the deprivation in inner city Liverpool of the 1970's.

The play is about a group of deprived Liverpool children who go on a a school trip to Conwy Castle in North Wales. Based on his experiences of school trips as a teacher at Dingle Vale School, ( one of the locations actually used in the film,) and those he had himself as a child Russell takes us with them on their Day Out.
The "Progress Class" - a class for special need children, Mrs Kay their teacher, helpers Susan and Colin and Digga and Reilly ( two older pupils who used to be in the Progress Class and are the class bullies) go on the coach trip which is supervised by deputy headmaster - Mr Briggs.

Mrs Kay teaches a special needs class called the "Progress Class". The whole class, along with Digga and Reilly, the slightly older class bullies who used to be in the Progress Class, are taken on a coach trip.
At the last minute, the Headmaster commissions Mr Briggs, the authoritarian Deputy Headmaster, to supervise the trip.

The intention of the trip was to see the castle at Conwy but ends up taking in the zoo , fairground and the beach. Mrs Kay, wants all the children on the trip to have fun , she feels really sorry for the kids who “don’t know what it is to look at a bar of chocolate”

Mrs Kay is very motherly to the fourteen year olds, who all have trouble reading and writing. She cares and understands for them and knows that will probably end up on the 'dole' or stuck in a dead end job so she tries to make sure that there is at least one happy time in their lives.

In contrast Mr Briggs has a harsh, stern and disciplined attitude to the children and just sees the children as lazy and spoilt and don't work hard enough.

The play shows the good and bad parts of growing up, in a way it is not disimiliar to 'Blood Brothers' in its portrayal of the life of the working class Liverpudlian children.

Our Day Out is a NEED to see/read play if you are from Liverpool or the surrounding areas.

If you are not you perhaps won't really find it AS amusing... But just go and see/read it anyway and see what you think. 

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