Russell Plays: 1: Breezeblock Park; Our Day Out; Stags and Hens; Educating Rita (Contemporary Dramatists) - Softcover

Russell, Willy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413702200 ISBN 13: 9780413702203

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2009

Synopsis

Breezeblock Park is set on a northern council estate and takes a look at the suffocating effect of possessions and possessiveness: "Trenchantly observed...hilarious, upsetting and somewhat seditious." (Variety); Our Day Out is about a school coach trip, an exuberant celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up - "a Dickensian fairytale...I have rarely seen a show that combined such warmth and such bleakness."(The Times); Stags and Hens "takes place in the gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other to hold their stag and hen parties...a bleakly funny and perceptive study of working-class misogyny, puritanism and waste" (Guardian); Educating Rita: "one way of describing Educating Rita would be to say that it was about the meaning of education...another would be to say that it was about the meaning of life. A third, that it is a cross between Pygmalion and Lucky Jim. A fourth, that it is simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious: a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending." (Sunday Times)

About this title

Review:

The highlight of this volume of Russell plays is the full script for his first international hit, Educating Rita, about a young cockney woman who, Pygmalion-like, comes under the tutelage of an upper-class professor. In Russell's play, however, it is the stuffy professor who finds his life forever changed by the encounter with the brash, vital young Rita. This, along with the three early Russell plays Breezeblock Park, Our Day Out (including sheet music for songs) and Stags and Hens, shows not only his mastery of the speech patterns of the British lower middle class, but also a colossal sympathy for their concerns, hopes, and dreams--which he went on to explore with such phenomenal success in Shirley Valentine and Blood Brothers.

About the Author:

Born near Liverpool he left school at 15. One of Britain's most successful playwrights his most famous play, Blood Brothers, continues to run in London. Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita have also been turned into hugely successful films.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0413702200
• ISBN 13: 9780413702203
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384