In 'Our Day Out', with whom does Willy Russell intend the audience to sympathise and identify, Mrs Kay or Mr Briggs?

In ‘Our Day Out’, with whom does Willy Russell intend the audience to sympathise and identify, Mrs Kay or Mr Briggs?

Willy Russell wrote the play ‘Our Day Out’, in 1977. This play is about a class of school children. It takes place in Liverpool. These kids are in a class called the Progress Class, and they go on a trip to Conway Castle in North Wales. At the last minute a strict deputy head teacher called Mr Briggs joins the trip. The play is set in a poor part of Liverpool and the characters speak with a Liverpool accent. Mrs Kay is a laid back teacher who thinks the kids come first, whereas Mr Briggs is old school and very strict. They are both the main characters and they are total opposites of one another.

Mr Briggs plays a really important part in this play because at first the audience are turned against him by the way he is so horrible with the kids, for instance when he was on the coach he shouted at the kids to sit down

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. In the middle of the play the audience start to like him because he starts to loosen up, lets the kids go to the fair and he really enjoys himself. At the end of the play he realises what he has done and begins to go back to his old self. None of the other characters liked him at the start but most of them did at the end. He begins by being strict and snappy with the kids and eventually builds a good relationship with the kids and trusts them.

Mrs Kay also plays a major part in the play, but in a different sort of way. This is because she is nice to the kids throughout the play, like when she gets the driver to give the kids some money to go to the shop and get some sweets. The audience would sympathise with her because of her warm nature. She tries to make Mr Briggs enjoy himself on the trip, it works, and he backs down and ends up going to the fair. A place he would not usually entertain. Mrs Kay comes over as a very calm lady and one who really likes the kids. The other characters like her, apart from Mr Briggs. They like how laid back she is and Mr Briggs does not trust her to organise a successful trip. He has heard what happened on her previous trips and thinks this one would be the same. I think that Colin and Susan would not like Mr Briggs because he is too strict and old school for their liking but I think they would like Mrs Kay because she is the sort of teacher that they would like to aspire to. I think Willy Russell has made a great choice of characters for his play. Their personalities are completely opposite from one another and it brings life to the script. The reader wishes to read on to discover more about the goings on.

In ‘Our Day Out’ the audience sympathise with Mrs Kay because her character does not change and she is calm and kind to everyone throughout the play. Whereas they would not sympathise with Mr Briggs because he changes in the middle of the play, then changes back, and for most of the play is quite horrible and snappy to all the other characters. Also Mr Briggs does not really like the kids in the Progress Class. When the animals are stolen from the zoo, the sympathy might change because the audience might think that Mrs Kay had become too much of a pushover and lost control of the class. When they return to the school, the audience would revert to their original opinion of Mr Briggs, one of a miserable, short tempered and stressed teacher.

Matthew Kipping 10Z6