Shirley Valentine, 42-year-old put-upon mother and housewife, leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband, packs her bags and heads for the sun. The note on the kitchen table reads "Gone to Greece back in two weeks." "It is a simple and brilliant idea...the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone - in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving." (Michael Coveney, Financial...

A Liverpool-set West Side Story, Blood Brothers by Willy Russell is the tale of twin brothers separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. One of them is given away to wealthy Mrs Lyons and grows up to be a successful government official. The other winds up unemployed and in prison. They grow up as friends in ignorance of their fraternity until they both fall in love with the same woman and the inevitable quarrel unleashes a bloodbath.

Blood Brothers was first performed in London in 1983 and opened on Broadway in 1993.

Breezeblock Park is set on a northern council estate and takes a look at the suffocating effect of possessions and possessiveness: "Trenchantly observed...hilarious, upsetting and somewhat seditious." (Variety); Our Day Out is about a school coach trip, an exuberant celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up - "a Dickensian fairytale...I have rarely seen a show that combined such warmth and such bleakness."(The Times); Stags and Hens "takes place in the gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other to hold their stag...

A Liverpudlian West Side Story: twin brothers are separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. She gives one of them away to wealthy Mrs Lyons and they grow up as friends in ignorance of their fraternity until the inevitable quarrel unleashes a blood-bath.
'Willy Russell is less concerned with political tub-thumping than with weaving a close-knit story about the working of fate and destiny ... it carries one along with it in almost unreserved enjoyment" Guardian

One of the longest-running and most successful ever West End musicals,...

'Stags and Hens takes place in the Gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other, to hold their stag and hen parties . . . a bleakly funny and perceptive study of working-class misogyny, puritanism and waste' Guardian

'Combines comedy with acrid truth in the style Willy Russell has made unmistakably his own ... and hits off brilliantly the herd instinct driving both sexes onward and bedward' Daily Telegraph

'Firmly in the centre of the playwright's best achievements: lively, coarse,...