Russell has written songs since the early 1960s, and has written the music to most of his plays and musicals. He also co-wrote "The Show", the theme song to the 1985 ITV drama series Connie, which became a top 30 hit for vocalist Rebecca Storm. His first album, Hoovering the Moon, was released in 2003.

In today's episode of Trini Hates Required Reading, I actually liked the book I had to read for uni, yay! From 26 March to 8 May 2010, as part of the Willy Russell season at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Laura Dos Santos reprised her radio performance on stage as Rita alongside Larry Lamb as Frank. This was the production's first London West End revival. This production transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End from 8 July to 30 October 2010, produced by Sonia Friedman. Laura Dos Santos reprised her radio and Menier Chocolate Factory performance as Rita, and Frank was played by renowned actor Tim Pigott-Smith. Like the Willy Russell season at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the production ran in repertory alongside Shirley Valentine starring Meera Syal. A UK tour played in 2012, starring Claire Sweeney and Matthew Kelly as Rita and Frank respectively. In 2000, Russell published his first novel, The Wrong Boy. In epistolary form, main character Raymond Marks, a 19-year old from Manchester, tells the story of his life in letters to his hero Morrissey. Frank invites her to a dinner party Julia is hosting, but Rita doesn’t attend. She tells him later that she felt all wrong to show up. She didn’t feel like she was wearing the right things or bringing the right wine. Frank tells her that none of that matters, that she only had to be herself, but she gets offended and feels like he wants to show her off as an attraction. Frank is a perfect foe: a professor and has-been poet, who has more interest in the contents of the whiskey bottles than the contents of the books that line his office shelves, and behind which he stashes the drink. He’s cynical and has taken this special student only for the money.During the 80s, Russell’s other work was also shown, including: the premiere of One For The Road, the television drama One Summer, the composition of the theme for the television series Connie and the film Mr Love. Rita decides to enrole on the open university were she meets Frank, a middle aged alcoholic who has been working at the university for years. This forms this unlikely due. During the 1980s, Willy Russell wrote Educating Rita for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which premiered in London. The play has been performed all over the world and was made into a film starring Julie Walters and Michael Caine. The screenplay was written by Willy Russell. RITA But they're not. Cos there's no meanin'!(...)An' like the worst thing is that y' know the people who are supposed to like represent the people on our estate, y' know the Daily Mirror an' the Sun, an' ITV an' the Unions, what are they tellin' people to do? They just tell them to go out an' get more money, don't they? Rita tells Frank about life as a hairdresser, saying that her clients expect too much of her. “I tell them, I’m just a hairdresser, not a plastic surgeon,” she says. “They want to be changed. But if you wanna change y’ have to do it from the inside, don’t y’?” She adds that this is what she’s trying to do by seeking an education. When Frank asks what she wants to learn, she says, “Everything.” Surprised, he asks what has led her to this sudden pursuit (she is, after all, twenty-six, making her older than the average student). In response, she explains that her decision wasn’t “sudden.” In fact, she’s been thinking for “ages” about pursuing an education, since she’s unhappy with her current working-class life. She says that everybody in her community, including her husband, expects her to get pregnant, but she’s not ready to become a mother. Instead, she wants to “find” herself first. As such, she takes birth control pills, though Denny, her husband, doesn’t know this.

The play is lively and witty throughout and debates some very interesting issues about class and education, only occasionally slipping into political speeches. Chris Honer's production manages to bring out all of the debates at the heart of the piece while hitting all of the humorous notes at the right pitch. The only thing that brings down the pace is some rather long scene changes; at times the play becomes quite episodic with sequences of short scenes, and some of the scene changes are almost as long as some of the scenes. Rita's desire to "improve" herself is amusing to Frank—who already has everything that she desires but does not value it—but her friends and family see it as a betrayal, as they proudly defend a lifestyle that she describes as being without any culture or any desire to look for something better. After a period during which she feels she doesn't fit in with the educated people she looks up to and feels like an outsider at home, she eventually finds her confidence—until we end with a bit of a role reversal between teacher and student. Like Rita, Russell had become a hairdresser after leaving school when he was 15, and his story of the sort of social mobility that is less likely to happen these days was closer to home than even Russell recognised.

Jones, Catherine. "Willy Russell archive launched at Liverpool John Moores University" liverpoolecho.co.uk, 28 November 2013. In the play, Rita does all the moving about on stage, while the man, for the most part, just sits at his desk and listens and reacts. Now the theatre is about 'acting'; the cinema is about 'reacting'. When Rita said something, the camera had to cut to me for my reaction. You can't do that on stage, and that's what happened to balance the weight of the two parts in the film.” The plays follows the relationship between a 26-year-old Liverpudlian working class hairdresser and Frank, a middle-aged university lecturer, during the course of a year. [1] In the play Frank has no surname, but when the film was made he became Dr. Frank Bryant. At college, he began writing drama and, in 1972, took a programme of two one-act plays to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where they were seen by writer John McGrath, who recommended Russell to the Liverpool Everyman, which commissioned the adaptation, When The Reds…, Russell's first professional work for theatre. [2] Career [ edit ] Frank's bitterness and cynicism return as he notices Susan beginning to adopt the pretensions of the university culture he despises. Susan becomes disillusioned by a friend's attempted suicide and realises that her new social niche is rife with the same dishonesty and superficiality she had previously sought to escape. The film ends as Frank, sent to Australia on a sabbatical, welcomes the possibilities of the change.

The original production received the 1980 Olivier Award nomination for Comedy Performance of the Year for Julie Walters and won for Comedy of the Year. [7] See also [ edit ] Maslin, Janet (21 September 1983). "Educating Rita (1983)". The New York Times . Retrieved 7 August 2010. Stade, George and Karbiener, Karen. "Russell, William Martin (1947-)", Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Volume 2, pg. 426, Infobase Publishing, 2010; ISBN 1438116896 Alongside further stage works, One for the Road (1976) [9] and Stags and Hens (1978), Russell was a screenwriter with television films, Death of A Young Young Man (1975, BBC1), [10] Daughters of Albion (1979), [11] Our Day Out (1977) [12] and the five-part serial One Summer (1983). [13] Educating Rita is a 1983 British comedy-drama film directed by Lewis Gilbert with a screenplay by Willy Russell based on his 1980 stage play. The film stars Michael Caine, Julie Walters, Michael Williams and Maureen Lipman. It won multiple major awards for best actor and best actress and was nominated for three Academy Awards.Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "an awkward blend of intellectual pretension and cute obvious humour" and "the perfect play about literature for anyone who wouldn't dream of actually reading books"; she wrote that "the essentially two-character play has been opened up to the point that it includes a variety of settings and subordinate figures, but it never approaches anything lifelike". [9] Returning to the Liverpool Everyman in 1986, Russell wrote Shirley Valentine which went on to an acclaimed West End run, [15] earning Olivier Awards for both its author (Comedy of the Year) and star Pauline Collins (Actress of the Year in a New Play). [16] The play transferred to New York for a highly successful Broadway run in February 1989 to November 1989, and a Tony Award as Best Actress for Collins. [17] The play was adapted by Russell for a 1983 film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters, directed by Lewis Gilbert. Frank, a middle-aged professor, drinks scotch in his university office and has a telephone conversation with Julia, his girlfriend. Sipping his drink, he tells her that he’ll miss dinner because he has to give a private tutoring session to a woman taking night classes at the university. He adds that he plans to go to the pub after the tutorial, saying that the entire reason he agreed to take on this extra teaching load was to pay for his drinking habit. When he hangs up, his student arrives. Her name is Rita, a hairdresser with a large personality. Within minutes of arriving, she surprises Frank by swearing and talking bluntly about a nude painting hanging in his office. Although some of her observations are crass, he’s pleasantly surprised by her wit and commentary. Ian Nathan reviewing the film for Britain's Empire magazine calls the film a "gem," and gives it four out of five stars. He describes Walters's "splendidly rich interpretation" of Rita and characterises her "reactions to the traditions of English lit[erature] [as] carry[ing] the caustic brilliance of true intelligence, a shattering of blithe pretension". Of Walters and Caine, Nathan opines, "they make a beautifully odd couple, in a love story at one remove". This reviewer depicts the director's effort as "effective, and finally optimistic," and observes about the film that the playwright's "angry message that people are trapped by their environment not their abilities, is salved by the sweetness of [Frank's and Rita's] final parting." Nathan's "verdict" of the film is one of "[c]harming, glittering characterisations that, though they don't run deep, nevertheless refresh." [8]

Educating Rita is such a funny, yet thought-provoking read about a Liverpool working class woman in pursuit of her education. The play is basically just dialogue between two characters: Frank and Rita. It is a very fast read and Russell's sense of humor made it really enjoyable. Russell has also written television projects, including the one-off drama, Our Day Out, which aired in 1977. He penned another television drama, One Summer, which aired as a five-part series on Channel 4 in 1983, starring a young David Morrissey. FRANK Found a culture have you, Rita? Found a better song to sing have you? No-you've found a different song, that's all-and on your lips it's shrill and hollow and tuneless. Oh, Rita, Rita...I knew when I started on the play I didn’t just want it to appeal to the Franks of this world. I wanted it to be for women like my mother, who weren’t afraid of books and art. I wanted it to connect with the Ritas in the audience as well.”