Acting Edition S. Series

Frank is a tutor of English in his fifties whose disillusioned outlook on life drives him to drink and bury himself in his books. Enter Rita, a forthright 26 year-old hairdresser who is eager to learn. After weeks of cajoling, Rita slowly wins over the very hesitant Frank with her innate insight and refusal to accept no for an answer. Their relationship as teacher and student blossoms, ultimately giving Frank a new sense of self and Rita the knowledge she so craves. The play became a hit film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.

Our Day Out

by Willy Russell, Bob Eaton, and Chris Mellors

Published 8 March 1984

This revised version of Willy Russell's much loved play won rave reviews when it opened in Liverpool in 2009. Slightly updated and featuring more songs, it retains all the humour and appeal of the original.

This educational edition in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan. Building on a decade of highly effective work and publications endorsed by national organisations and supported by teachers and consultants across Britain, each book in the series:

meets the new requirements at KS3 and GCSE (2010)
features detailed, structured schemes of work utilising drama approaches to improve literary and language analysis
places pupils' understanding of the learning process at the heart of the activities
will help pupils to boost English GCSE success and develop high-level skills at KS3
will save teachers considerable time devising their own resources.
Mrs Kay's Progress Class are off to Alton Towers - until Mr Briggs gets on board. The destination might have changed in this new version of Willy Russell's classic play, but mixing humour, lively songs and the poignancy of the original, this drama of a class day out to remember is ideal for Year 9 and above.

Blood Brothers

by Willy Russell

Published 1 September 1985

Musical drama / 5 male, 3 female, plus small chorus

Scenery: Interiors/Exteriors

Blood Brothers, by the author of Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, is ahauntying rags to riches tragedy of our times. A woman with numerous children to support surrenders one of her new born twins to the childless woman she cleans for. The boys grow up streets apart, never learning the truth but becoming firm friends and falling in love with the same girl. One prospers while the other falls on hard times. A narrator warns that a price has to be paid for separating twins: the life of the blood brothers who die on the day they find out they are related.

"The most exciting thing to have happened to the English musical theatre for years."-Punch

"A full bodied musical, a wonderful melodrama that is also a thoroughly modern ballad opera."-Wall Street Journal

"There are so many good things to shout and sing about in this new musical."-Daily Mail

Stags And Hens

by Willy Russell

Published 1 July 1985

This cynical play by the author of Educating Rita is a comedy of wedding eve nerves set in the loos of a tacky Liverpool club where Dave and Linda, unbeknownst to each other, are having parties.

Breezeblock Park

by Willy Russell

Published 1 July 1978

Superior council house dwellers Betty, Reeny, Vera and their men regard themselves as a close knit family team despite their concealed jealousies and occasional recriminations. When Betty's daughter Sandra announces she is pregnant and intends to live unmarried with her student lover, the news explodes like an atom bomb.4 women, 5 men

I Read the News Today

by Willy Russell

Published 1 August 1989

One for the Road

by Willy Russell

Published 1 March 1980