CAROL “Don’t y’ know what the progress class is? It’s Mrs Kay’s class. Y’ go down there in the week if y’ can’t do readin’ or sums or writin’. If you’re backward like.”
LES “By Christ, I’ll bet she’s kept busy. They’re all bloody backward round here.”
At the start we also meet two other main children, Reilly and Digga. They used to be in the progress class.
REILLY “Yeh, well, we used to be in the progress class didn’t we?”
SUSAN “But Brian, you’re not in the Progress Class any longer, are you? Now that you can read and write you’re back in normal classes.”
Here we learn that the people in the Progress Class cannot even read or write, this shows us how deprived these children are and how they don’t even get much of a chance to learn. Even the head teacher has no will to get them a decent education.
The way Carol relates to Les and Mrs Kay you get the feeling that they are her ideal Mother and Father.
Reilly and Digga seem to know Mrs Kay well and seem comfortable with her. She seems to know all of the children quite well and gets on well with two other teachers Susan and Colin. All of the teacher’s apart from Mrs Kay seem to have an accent, although not as strong as the children’s.
When we are introduced to Mr Briggs, his relationship with Mrs Kay seems as though he doesn’t like her style of teaching, but Mrs Kay proceeds in being friendly. She comes across as a laid back, caring and friendly woman. Mr Briggs seems arrogant and passionate about being professional. Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs are two different extremes. Mrs Kay is laid back and caring, but Mr Briggs is strict and sees the children there to be taught and not there to have fun.
DRIVER “….you haven’t checked them have y’?”
MRS KAY “Checked them? Checked them for what?”
DRIVER “Chocolate and lemonade! We don’t allow it. I’ve seen it on other coaches, madam; fifty-two vomitin’ kids, it’s no joke. I’m sorry but we don’t allow that.”
The driver seems quite harsh and takes extreme measures. Mrs Kay doesn’t have the time to check the children for sweets and lemonade, so she speaks with the driver, which is quite an amusing conversation.
MRS KAY “Just take a look at those streets. Ronnie, would you say that they were the sort of streets that housed prosperous parents?”
Mrs Kay says a number of other things in order to make Ronnie feel quite guilty and wrongful. She says how they don’t even get to eat chocolate. They look at it in the shop windows and wish they could have it. When the driver gets back on the coach the kids hide their chocolate and lemonade and Ronnie, to make himself feel more comfortable, gives one of the kids some money to go and get some sweets for all of them to share.
On the coach journey social disadvantage is shown many times in the conversations people have. One instance is where Carol and Mrs Kay are speaking, she asks if she would ever be able to live a better lifestyle.
CAROL “Know them places on the telly with gardens, an’ trees outside and that”
MRS KAY “You’ve got trees in Pilot Street, haven’t you?
CAROL “They planted some after the riots. But the kids chopped them down an’ burnt them on bonfire night….”
Reilly is also very unfortunate, we learn that his mother died ten years ago and that he hasn’t even seen his father in two years. The writer doesn’t say where he is living or who he is living with.
Andrew’s doesn’t have a very good home life either he has been smoking for five years and his parents know about it. His mother and father don’t live together and his mother is a prostitute.
ANDREWS “Sir, he just comes round now an’ then an’ has a barney with me mam. Then 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.”
Mr Briggs seems quite upset about these children and their lives which they live, he tells Andrew’s to try and stop smoking. At first he doesn’t seem to understand what the children are telling him, it takes him a while to realise how poor they are.
The kind of language between the teachers and the children also shows social disadvantage, the children have a very limited vocabulary and strong accents whereas the teachers don’t. The children speak a non-standard dialect, but the teachers speak the prestige form of language.
In the shop the kids disagree with the prices of the sweets and steal because they can’t afford it. The shopkeepers think they are getting loads of money, to find out later that they didn’t get anything. This shows that they often steal, as they don’t have much money and are quite experienced at it. Some of them might even be encouraged by their own parents to steal. On the coach Linda is explaining to Jackie how she is going to marry someone with a decent income and treats women with decency. Jackie doesn’t see this as a reality.
JACKIE “Oh don’t be mental. You’ll never get a husband like sir. You’ll end up marryin’ someone like your old feller.”
When they go to the zoo none of the children have seen some of the animals there and are quite confused at some of the things they see.
BRIGGS “And a bear is an extremely dangerous animal. You see those claws, they could leave a really nasty mark.”
ANDREWS “Could it kill y’sir?”
They don’t even know simple animals like a bear. They obviously don’t have much interaction with animals and decide to take some with them, they steal all sorts of small animals. But the zookeeper is quick enough to get them in time to tell Mr Briggs. Initially when they were at the zoo Mr Briggs was quite pleased with the children as they seemed interested in the animals and were learning new things.
Each scene develops Willy Russell’s concerns by making the situation increasingly severe each time and how they don’t seem to see anything wrong with what they are doing. Also the way they question things for example when Ronson and others are asking about the bear they seem to be deprived.
At Conwy Castle the children don’t seem interested in the castles history much at all and are just running about screaming and playing, Mr Briggs sees this as chaos and argues with Mrs Kay that it should have been better organised and the kids should be sorted out more. I believe this argument is very significant to the way the kids live and shows Willy Russell’s concern very well.
MRS KAY “…..It’s a shame really isn’t it? We bring them out to a crumbling pile of rocks and mortar and they think they’re in the fields of heaven.”
Mrs Kay understands very well how badly the children’s lives are and how there isn’t a chance for them in the world to get a better lifestyle than they have.
MRS KAY “There’s no point in pretending that a day out to Wales is going to be of some great educational benefit to them. It’s too late for them. Most of these kids were rejects the day they came into the world. We’re not going to solve anything today Mr Briggs. Can’t we just give them a good day out?”
Mr Briggs still disagrees with Mrs Kay and tells her so and accuses her of having a bad attitude for a member of the teaching profession. He basically says that he doesn’t even think she should be a teacher. Mrs Kay starts to loose her temper at Mr Briggs persistence.
MRS KAY “Well what’s your alternative? Eh? Pretending? That they’ve got some sort of future ahead of them? Even if you cared for these kids you couldn’t help them to make a future for them. You won’t educate them because nobody wants them educated.”
Mr Briggs tries to reason with her but Mrs Kay gets carried away and continues on building on her point she is trying to make to Mr Briggs.
At the beach Carol tells Mrs Kay that she doesn’t want to leave Wales and she doesn’t want to go back home, Mrs Kay tries to explain to her that she can’t stay but she asks why. Mrs Kay tells her it’s a special day, she doesn’t seem to take this information too well and wanders off when Mrs Kay isn’t looking.
Reilly persists in trying to flirt with Susan, so she goes and speaks with him and he gets embarrassed.
When Mrs Kay realises that Carol is missing she asks Susan and Colin if they had seen her, but they hadn’t seen her for hours. In the panic as a last resort she asks Mr Briggs who doesn’t seem too impressed or surprised.
BRIGGS “All I can say is it’s a wonder you haven’t lost half a dozen of them.”
Colin can’t hold back any more of his anger towards Mr Briggs and starts to get involved.
COLIN “Listen Briggs, it’s about time someone told you what a berk you…?”
BRIGGS “And you listen! Sonny! Don’t try telling me a thing, because you haven’t even earned the right. Don’t you worry, when we get back to school your number’s up, as well as hers (MRS KAY.) And you (SUSAN.) Yes I saw what was going on between you and Reilly. When we get back I’ll have lot of you.”
MRS KAY “Would you mind postponing your threats until we find Carol Chandler? At the moment I’d say the most important thing is to find the girl.”
BRIGGS “Don’t you mean try and find her.”
The relevance of this little argument is later on the cliff at first Mr Briggs was really irate and wants to get back school as soon as possible, then things take a twist. Mr Briggs goes up on the cliff to look for Carol with success. Mr Briggs starts to tell her off, then Carol tells him to stay away from her, which shocks Mr Briggs. He obviously doesn’t expect a pupil to shout back at him. He does as she wishes and tells her to just come down. She just tells him to go down on his own.
CAROL “Tell Mrs Kay she can go home without me. I’m stoppin’ here, by the sea.”
BRIGGS “Now you just listen to me. I’ve had just about had enough today, just about enough and I’m not putting up with a pile of silliness from the likes of you. Now come on!”
CAROL “Try an’ get me an’ I’ll jump over.”
BRIGGS “Listen you stupid girl, get yourself over here this minute.”
This continues for a while when Carol says something which seems to hurt Mr Briggs a bit and this makes him soften up.
CAROL “What are you worried for eh? You don’t care do y’? Do y’?”
BRIGGS “What? About you?…..Listen, if I didn’t care why would I be up here now, trying to stop you doing something stupid?”
CAROL “Because if I jumped over, you’d get into trouble when you get back to school. That’s why Briggsy, so stop goin’ on. You hate me.”
Carol continues to say how he hates her and all of the kids, she seems to realise reality a bit more and knows how to get Mr Briggs. These scenes show Willy Russell’s concerns to us through Carol and Mr Briggs. Carol hasn’t got a chance to live somewhere nice, and how throughout her life because of her poor status, her social life would be affected. In this scene Mr Briggs and Carol seem to bond a bit, Carol threatening to jump off the cliff increases the drama.
Mr Briggs lightens up after he gets Carol down and he even tells the driver to take them to the fair.
They go to the fair and before they leave to add a bit of comedy after the seriousness at the cliff, Ronson asks Mr Briggs if they can go again tomorrow.
The social environment of the fair influences Mr Briggs; I wouldn’t imagine him to be wearing a cowboy hat anywhere else.
When they get back to Liverpool Reilly realises how horrible the place he lives in actually is and some of the others seem to as well. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun at the fair even Ronny who at the beginning was incredibly weary of the kids getting on the bus with sweets and lemonade.
The goldfish that Carol won in the bag is like herself, she is stuck in the inner city of Liverpool and it is almost impossible for her to get out of her lifestyle. The concerns of Willy Russell in this play are very much 70s related and I believe that it was probably written near the end of the 70s or early 80s. I don’t think that all of Willy Russell’s concerns are still relevant in today’s life, there aren’t many factory jobs but there are many other jobs that require little qualification. Although this is the case there are still problems of social disadvantage present, people are split up into classes and if someone wears cheap clothes for example they will get teased at school or people look down on them.
Willy Russell
