Willy Russell Plays: Blood Brothers, Our Day Out and Educating Rita - and the theme of Social Inequality

... In the three plays I have read by Willy Russell, all of them are linked by the fact that they all contain an aspect of social inequality. Russell uses humour in all these plays to show serious messages, mostly through stereotypes. In every play there are two very contrasting social groups, each figure-headed by certain characters in the stories. For example, in Blood Brothers, Mickey figureheads the working class society like Rita does in Educating Rita, and the children do in Our Day Out. Whereas Eddie figureheads the middle class society in Blood Brothers, Frank does in Educating Rita, and Mr. Briggs does in Our Day Out. We found that the people from the working class backgrounds were all very broad scoucers, who tended to use slang words such as "ciggie" and "chippie." They were what you would call a very typical stereotype of a broad

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