Russell, Willy

William Russell was born in 1947 in Whiston, Lancashire, and attended school until the age of 15. After secondary school, he became a ladies’ hairdresser, which he continued to do for five years, eventually running his own salon. In his early twenties, after a successful career in hairdressing, Russell decided to return to college, where he trained to be a teacher. His experiences about the power of education to transform lives are a pivotal theme in some of his works, such as Educating Rita.

During his time teaching, Russell started writing short dramas, and he performed three one-act plays at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1972. It was here that his plays were seen by the playwright John Peter McGrath. McGrath was well established in the theatre world and recommended Russell’s work to the Liverpool Everyman, where Russell’s first professional production took place.

Two years later, Russell had his first major theatrical success with his play based on the Beatles, entitled John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, which won the Evening Standard and London Theatre Critics Award for Best Musical.

The 1980s were Russell’s most prolific decade for writing plays. In 1980 he wrote Educating Rita about a working-class woman who wants to study for a degree at the Open University. The play was so successful that in the same year it premiered at the Warehouse, London, it was transferred to the West End. Educating Rita received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, and a feature film of the play was made in 1983.

Russell’s other runaway success, Blood Brothers, was also written and produced at this time. Set in Liverpool, it chronicles the lives of a pair of twins separated at birth and the different lives they experience due to the social environments in which they mature. This play includes many of the same themes of class, education and social inequality which were prominent in Educating Rita. Like Educating Rita, Blood Brothers received a Laurence Olivier Award, this time for Best New Musical, and started its very lengthy run on the West End.

The 1980s continued to be rich in creativity for Russell as in 1988 he wrote Shirley Valentine, a play about a housewife whose life is transformed after a holiday in Greece. In the same year, the play received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, and the following year a feature film was released. Shirley Valentine received the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1990 after the play had been transferred to Broadway in New York.

In 2000 Russell published his first novel, The Wrong Boy, and four years later released his first music album, Hoovering the Moon.

Russell’s work continues to have a prominent place in the theatre today, with Blood Brothers and Educating Rita being regularly performed on stages across the UK. In 2013, an archive of Russell’s work was opened at Liverpool John Moores University.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ralph_McTell_and_Willy_Russell_(82088880).jpg
Author: Bryan Ledgard
Licence: Creative Commons
Changes made: cropped