Early Works
Keep your Eyes Down (Written: 1971)
Produced as part of a student production at St. Katherines College, Liverpool. The one- act play, was first performed at St. Katherine’s College by the college drama society in December 1971, for their annual production. The Liverpool Echo reviewed the play.
The work evolved into one of Willy Russell’s TV plays, ‘The Boy with the Transistor Radio’.
The success of Keep Your Eyes Down prompted the college drama group Cateysaints to present the play at the Fringe at Edinburgh Festival in August 1972.
1972: Blind Scouse
Blind Scouse was a triple bill first produced at St Katherine’s college and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. ‘Keep your Eyes Down’, ‘Sam O Shanker’ and ‘Playground’ formed the triple bill at Rifle Lodge.
Willy Russell and the company had struggled to find a space to perform at the Fringe Festival. Willy asked a good friend of his, the drummer, Davey Johnstone who lived in Edinburgh (and went on to play with Elton John’s band). Davey asked his father if he could help because he had connections to the Rifle Masonic Lodge. He was able to persuade them to allow the company to stage Blind Scouse at the Lodge, on the strict understanding that there was no nudity or bad language! At that time, they had never let any shows go on there – thereafter, the Lodge became a highly sought after regular venue.
The production was seen and admired in Edinburgh by John McGrath who was instrumental in getting Willy Russell his first professional commission for the Liverpool Everyman Company, then under the directorship of Alan Dossor.
Playground (Written: 1972)
“I decided that Sam O’Shanker couldn’t fit as a double bill with ‘Keep Your Eyes Down’ because it was a massive broad comedy and it would be a broken backed evening with an interval between those. So I sat down and very quickly wrote ‘Playground’
Willy was in teacher training at the time and the play was heavily influenced by that experience – the play centres round five children in a bike shed who hijack a teacher and hold him hostage.
Sam O’Shanker (Written: 1972)
"The first 'real' piece of writing I did was to adapt, update and relocate Burn's narrative poem Tam O'Shanter. I had a number of Scottish friends, including the singer Tich Frier who used to recite the poem. I was keen to do the same for the English club audiences that I played to, but, of course I couldn't really do justice to the marvellous dialect which would, anyway, probably have been impenetrable to many in the audience.
So, eventually I came up with the idea of writing a new, updated and relocated version of the poem.”
Commissioned by Vanload, the Everyman Theatre Touring Company and first produced at St. Katherines College, Liverpool in 1972. The same production was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe in August & September and then went on to tour pubs, clubs and community centres.
Blind Scouse Gallery
Click images below to enlarge
1973: When the Reds
In 1973 Willy Russell was commissioned by the Everyman Theatre to adapt Alan Plater's play, 'The Tigers Are Coming.' When the Reds’ was Willy Russell’s first professional play, produced at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Directed by Pam Brighton, the cast included a young Bernard Hill and 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.”
“Pam Brighton is offered the direction of what has now become ‘When The Reds’. I meet with Pam. I’m immediately enchanted by her and she sees my script and she goes “who wrote this?” “me”, “well we want more of this”, you know that kind of stuff. “do more”. I said “well I’m told to be respectful”. “Fuck respect, jokes is what we want”. I was really affronted because at an early rehearsal she said “Oh what’s this?” and she’d be throwing pages of script out “we’ll cut that”, and that was my most florid poetic pros and she’d go “that’s why it’s getting cut”. “Do you know any jokes?”. Well I knew loads of jokes, I did the folk scene and all that kind of stuff and I could do that.
But then, the biggest blow of all, she said “what this script needs is more…” she said “the fella who writes for Morecombe & Wise, doesn’t he live in Liverpool?” Eddie Braben. So she brought Eddie Braben into rehearsals and asked Eddie to supply… I felt so kicked in the balls. And I knew I could come up with gags so suddenly I’m piling anything and I give Barry Walgar who’s playing Ray, no, Bernard, Bernard Hill played Ray because Bernard’s in the company now, along with Anthony Sher and suddenly all the company are coming up to me and Eddie Braben going “can you write a couple of those one liners for me? Can you write me a couple of gags?’ so I was like littering this with gags but thinking of myself as really cheap and suddenly Pam is not calling out for Eddie Braben any longer, she’s saying to me “can you do something with that” and you’d do something with that and it was a very brutal but very good lesson. One of the things it taught me to examine is if you’ve got long speeches, have a look at them and see if you can cut them. Keep everything moving, still with political clout. Pam really wanted to go for that”
1973: Tam Lin
A musical play for children, produced by Dovecot Primary School. Tam Lin was performed on one occasion in 1972.
1974: The 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.