By Harry Mottram: It’s been 20 years since Next Stage Theatre’s artistic director Anne Ellison last directed Willy Russell’s play Our Day Out. And the veteran of Bath’s theatre scene is a self confessed fan of the writer who is behind such hit plays as Educating Rita as she ‘had always felt a close affinity to Willy Russell’s writing both as a teacher, and as a director.’
Now some two decades later she has schooled the cast of today’s youth theatre group to play the unruly and deprived class of school children who are taken on a school trip by their stressed teachers with the inevitably comic but also poignant consequences. The play was originally screened in the BBC’s Play for Today series in 1977 and was such a hit it was adapted six years later into a musical – or rather a play with musical content.
Like Educating Rita the narrative covers the social issues of Willy Russell’s Liverpool of the early 1970s when there were – and still are – major social problems of poverty. With themes of a lack of education, a lack of opportunity and deprivation resulting in a lack of good careers, the story of those problems are voiced through the characters who all have issues, but at times find it hard to articulate them.
The programme for this new production reads: “Our Day Out’s initial concepts were inspired by the reality Russell saw when he was working as a teacher in Liverpool, with the original script penned in just five days. The script is still used in schools today to explore themes of inequality and poverty, and their effects on education.”
It is a fast paced ensemble production with a large cast of mainly young actors who are ideally suited to playing their Liverpudlian counterparts. Andrew Ellison plays a number of roles including Les the Lollipop man – a role he played in the 2005 production – while Tania Lyons takes the role of the headteacher – and she will appear in Larkin With Women later in November at the same theatre. Young George Chivers has the task of bringing the hard pressed teacher Mr Briggs to life with the rest of the cast playing the school children and a number of adults who have to put up with the cheeky kids intent on having a good time on their day out.
Our Day Out is presented by Next Stage Youth Theatre Company at the Mission Theatre from Wednesday 29th October – Saturday 1st November 2025, 7:30pm. Matinee Saturday 1st November, 2:00pm. The Mission Theatre is at 32 Corn Street, Bath, BA1 1UF. More details and tickets at https://www.missiontheatre.co.uk/
Next Stage Youth meets on Sundays 4:30pm – 6:00pm at Burdall’s Yard, 7A Anglo Terrace Bath, BA1 5NH. Next enrolment: Sunday November 9th 4:30-6pm. See the website
