Mr Briggs has been sent on the outing to keep order and proceeds to try to do this. He clearly has no sympathy with the children – he sees them as the enemy. He calls them ‘non-academics’ and characterises them as having two quid pocket money and watching television till all hours. He actually accuses Mrs. Kay of “being on their side.” (To which she replies: “absolutely Mr Briggs, absolutely.”) Mr Briggs never talks to the children; he talks at them or about them. He takes their bad behaviour as a personal slight and betrayal. His discussions with Mrs Kay show his contempt for the children and his ‘traditional’ views. He says that the children are like dogs being taken to the countryside and must be kept on a lead or they will run wild. He manages the children by threatening them. As a traditional, authoritarian type of teacher he is a bit of a caricature. His attitudes and actions are realistic and his character takes on greater depth when he shows understanding and sympathy, for instance when he rescues Carol at the cliff edge and when he enjoys himself at the fair and has his photo taken wearing a cowboy hat. Although he reverts to his old self when they return to school and he spoils the reel of film. Before doing he looks up the school this cinematic device shows that however much more he had grown to understand he was still under the control of the school and the establishment. The opposition between his character and Mrs Kay’s is very effective and forms the central theme of the play.
Colin and Susan are less important characters and are seen to sympathise and support Mrs Kay. They are much closer to the children’s age group and are there in the background helping to look after them. The girls’ crush on Colin and the older boys’ teasing about his relationship with Susan are realistic and add comedy to the play.
The children are all in the remedial class and do not have any illusions about their place in the school and in society – except perhaps Carol, who wishes for a better life in the country and doesn’t want to go back. They are working class, many come from single parent families and they don’t expect to be treated with respect by adults. Their language and accents are working class Liverpudlian and their speech is believable and comic.
There are many good characters amongst the pupils, however for this essay I will be concentrating on the four main ones: Digga and Reilly (who are 15 and have moved on from the Progress Class), Carol and Andrews. Linda and Karen also have a role in the play but mostly as comic interest. Reilly and Digga have talked their way onto the outing at the last minute. This in itself is not very realistic, as they would have to have parental permission and would not just be allowed to skip normal lessons. They are portrayed as the tough boys: they smoke at the back of the bus, and anywhere else they get half a chance; they tease and bully the other children; they also make fun of all the teachers, except Mrs. Kay; they purposely flaunt the rules throughout the play and act tough. Finally, Reilly gets put in his place by Susan. I think they are realistic because this behaviour is typical of rebellious tough boys. And their dialog very believable.
Andrews and some of the younger boys are there as a foil, mainly to Digga and Reilly. They are capable of misbehaviour by themselves, for example when they steal the animals from the zoo and steal from the sweetshop, but are also tempted into naughtiness by the older boys, as when Andrews smokes Reilly’s cigarette and gets caught by Mr. Briggs. When this happens Mr. Briggs moves him and proceeds to question him about his habit of smoking. This conversation gives us a glimpse of Andrews’ domestic situation: a mum who seems not to care and an absent and violent father.
‘I dunno, sir, sir, he just comes round every now an’ then an’ has a barney with me mam. Then he goes off again. I think he tries to get money off her but she won’t give him it though. She hates him. We all hate him.’ His casual approach to this suggests to the audience that he is not the only one of the pupils who is in this type of situation. Mr. Briggs is shocked, thus outlining the class difference between them, and his complete lack of understanding of the children’s lives. This difference is shown throughout the play using language: all the children speak in Liverpool slang whereas the teachers use ‘correct’ English. I believe Andrews’ character is realistic as, like the majority of the other children; he is not intentionally naughty for the sake of it – that is just how he is – and still shows a lot of childlike innocence. We are led to believe that Andrews’ family situation is typical. This may be an exaggeration but it is effective in pointing out the hardship of the students’ lives and their difference from the teachers’ lives.
Carol is the first character to appear in the play, and also the last. She is different from the other children: she is quiet and thoughtful; she ponders life greatly; she receives and shows a lot of tenderness towards Mrs. Kay; she is generally well behaved and sticks by Mrs. Kay. Her character is shown well when the party are in the castle and the other children are running wild while she sits watching the sea with Mrs. Kay. She analyses their situation and is pessimistic:
‘That’s why we never have nothin’ nice round our way – cos we’d just smash it up. The Corpy knows that so why should they waste their money, eh? They’d give us things if we looked after them, but we don’t look after them, do we?’ These views sound very stuffy and traditional and are reminiscent of Mr. Briggs. Carol’s mood changes during the play from an excited conversation with the lollipop man about her eagerness to get to school for the outing through wistfulness about the contrast between Liverpool and the countryside to the climax on the cliffs when she would rather die than go back. The audience understands and sympathises with Carol’s feelings. Her thoughts and motivation for going off on her own to the cliff are realistic, however the idea that she would actually throw herself off it rather than go back has a dramatic rather than a realistic function. The situation has been created to make a point that emphasises her dissatisfaction and also allows her and Mr Briggs to grow. That is the point in the play where he is forced to understand Mrs Kay’s point of view.
The basis for the situations in the play are realistic, but they are taken further for dramatic and comic value and to emphasise Willy Russell’s main point and motivation for writing the play. The outing is made up of a series of small incidents: The coach ride, the sweetshop, the zoo, the castle, the beach the fairground and then the return. In the first place, the idea that a planned school visit to Conwy Castle could be spontaneously expanded to take in so many unplanned visits, is not realistic. However it is effective because it allows the audience both to see the children’s behaviour in a number of different situations and Mrs Kay’s fun-loving attitude to the outing.
On the coach ride the audience is introduced to the children and Mr. Briggs establishes his authoritarian attitude. At the sweetshop the audience is invited to support the children’s thieving of almost the entire stock of the shop, by being shown that the owners were planning to cheat them anyway. There are three points made by Willy Russell in the zoo scene: firstly that the children are capable of learning from Mr Briggs when interested in the subject, for example about the animals; secondly that they have empathy with the caged animals (particularly the bear); and finally that it is not really deliberate naughtiness that they steal the animals, but rather their affection towards the animals and their deprivation along with their lack of understanding that they shouldn’t do this. Through the Castle, the beach and the fairground the audience sees Mr. Briggs gradually relaxing his attitude and the children having innocent fun. All of these scenes have a basis in reality and the attitudes and behaviour of the children are realistic, although accentuated for dramatic and comic effect.
These scenes also allow for the debate between Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs. This debate forms the central part of the play: whether the children should be disciplined and forced to be educated or whether they should be encouraged to expand their horizons and enjoy themselves. The audience is guided to sympathise with Mrs Kay’s philosophy, as she puts forward a coherent view, while Mr Briggs just rants about how wrong it all is. Mrs. Kay’s realistic view is given when she says:
“No, you listen, Mr Briggs, you listen and perhaps you’ll stop fooling yourself. Teach them? Teach them what? You’ll never teach them because nobody knows what to do with them. Ten years ago you could teach them to stand in a line, you could teach them to obey, to expect little more than a lousy factory job. But now they haven’t even got that to aim for. Mr Briggs, you won’t teach them because you’re in a job that’s designed and funded to fail! There’s nothing for them to do, any of them; most of them were born for factory fodder, but the factories have closed down.”
The way that Willy Russell uses language adds to the realism and effectiveness of the play. The Liverpudlian slang and quick dialogue throughout the play reflect everyday speech patterns. The only long speeches are when Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs are arguing over their philosophies. This is also realistic, as when someone feels strongly about a subject they will lay out their arguments extensively.
Overall, “Our Day Out” is a realistic portrayal of the situation of working class remedial class children in Liverpool in the ‘70s.
Willy Russell writes with a lively and accurate dialogue and authentic accent and language. His characters are given depth and sympathy although to some extent they are caricatures. However some of the situations are taken further than normal life for dramatic and comic value and in order to make the points effectively. The central points of the play are: firstly to highlight the problems facing children let down by the British education system and society in an economic recession; and secondly to make the point of Mrs Kay’s philosophy that the individual has a right to experience joy in life regardless of their supposed potential within society. The fact that he uses his own experiences and that the play is set in the Liverpool of his upbringing gives greater realism to the action and makes it effective. The final scene of the play, as Carol walks off down the road, clutching her goldfish – a happy, smiling girl returning to her deprived life, but with her new-found knowledge of its limitations – is very poignant. She glances up to see Mr Briggs’ car driving off after he has made the decision to revert to his old self.
