'Our Day Out' - Choose three incidents in the play, which you consider to be comic. Show how Russell has created good comedy out of the characters, events and dialogue in your chosen scenes.

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‘Our Day Out’

By Ben Gowland

Choose three incidents in the play, which you consider to be comic. Show how Russell has created good comedy out of the characters, events and dialogue in your chosen scenes.

In this assignment I am going to look at the ways in which Willy Russell has created humour within the play ‘Our Day Out’. I will pay particular attention to the characters, their dialogue and the events that take place

       Willy Russell was born in a town near Liverpool, he left school at fifteen with no idea what he wanted to do and nothing but an O’level in English. ‘Our Day Out’, ‘Blood Brothers’ and ‘Educating Rita’ are a reflection of Russell’s own experience of education. At the age of twenty Russell decided to resume his education, he enrolled as a mature student at Liverpool’s Childwall college as a mature student While studying he saw a play called ‘Unruly Elements’ by John McGrath and decided to become a playwright. His first successful play was called ‘John, Paul, George, Ringo and…Bert’ It was a musical about the Beatles and was performed at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. He wrote ‘Our Day Out’ during the seventies.

       ‘Our Day Out’ is set in an inner-city comprehensive school whose catchment area is deprived and where there are many poor or single parent families with high unemployment and few opportunities for young people leaving school, ‘Our Day Out’ focuses on the “Progress Class’s” day out. Even in that area they are underachievers, have low reading ages, poor academic abilities and little chance of passing any examinations. Willy Russell uses this to deal with a range of issues, such as the failure of schools to develop pupils, and the inequality of opportunity. Russell’s comedy is effective in doing this as it is showing an amusing story instead of lecturing the audience. Traditional comedy entertains and ends happily, however “Our Day Out” has emotion, realism and the end is not a happy one for all the characters.

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       When Mrs Kay's 'Progress Class' are unleashed for a day's coach trip to Conway Castle in Wales, it is an celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up and being footloose, fourteen and free from school. However this is more than a romp - it highlights the depressing present and empty future for these comprehensive no-hopers from the back streets of Liverpool, for whom a day out is as much as they can expect.

       The first comical incident I have decided to analyse starts near the beginning of scene four. It is set ...

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