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.

Willy Russell cheat sheet

Willy Russell

Date and place of birth

23 August 1947 in Whiston, Lancashire

Training

St Katherine’s College in order to teach and ended up writing
plays there

First job

Ladies’ hairdresser

Biggest influence

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.