A comedy about the sadness and madness of happy family life, Willy Russell’s Breezeblock Park is at once painfully funny and sharply moving. The play is set on a Liverpool housing estate at Christmas.

 

Christmas Eve and a close-knit Liverpool family gather for the festivities. But lurking beneath the glitzy gift wrap, tired tinsel and fairy lights lie concealed jealousies, petty squabbles and a secret. As the drinks flow, feather’s fly and a daughter’s news threatens to tear the family apart. Betty and Reeny are sisters, Tommy is their brother.

 

 

'Willy Russell at his funniest'...

THE PLAY: Commissioned and directed by Alan Dosser for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre.   A new production of this play was directed by Alan Dosser for the Mermaid Theatre, London in August 1977, which transferred to the Whitehall Theatre in September of the same year. THE ORIGINAL CAST: Betty - Eileen O'Brien Syd - Peter Postlethwaite Sandra - Emma Jean Richards Vera - Julie Walters Tommy - Kevin Lloyd Reeny - Jane Wood Ted - Nick Stringer John - Michael Radcliffe Tim - Christopher Blake THE ORIGINAL CAST: A young Pete Postlethwaite and Julie Walters. "Even at the time and without the benefit of hindsight one knew just what an extraordinary company of actors Alan Dossor had assembled." WILLY RUSSELL   THE WHITEHALL CAST: Prunella Scales Norman Rossington Bernard Gallagher Eileen Kennally Peter Postlethwaite Anthony O'Donnell Emma Jean Richards David Neilson Julie Walters   Directed by Alan Dosser Designed by Adrian Vaux Lighting by Joe Davis

THE PLAY:   THE PLAY:

 

First produced at the Everyman in 1975, Breezeblock Park was a sell-out success. Almost thirty years on, Glen Walford made a welcome return to direct a new production featuring an outstanding Liverpool cast including Pauline Daniels and Michael Starke.

THE 2003 CAST at the PLAYHOUSE Betty - Pauline Daniels Syd - Michael Starke Sandra - Annabelle Dowler Vera - Sophie Stanton Tommy - Neil Caple Reeny - Joanna Monro Ted - Andrew Schofield John - Ray Newe Tim - Stephen Fletcher

THE PLAY:

Breezeblock Park examines the existence of a working-class Liverpool family, the traditions and prejudices that form the dynamics of the relationship, set within the context of the socio-political climate.

With a stalwart cast embracing the talents of Pauline Daniels (as Betty), Michael Starke (Syd), Neil Caple (Tommy), Andrew Schofield (Ted), Joanna Munro (Reeny) and Sophie Stanton (Vera), Willy Russell's play is brought to life.

In the midst of Yuletide festivities, issues surrounding class-consciousness, snobbery, materialism, sibling rivalry, matriarchy and "civilised" middle-class culture are explored.

Precursor to Educating Rita, Breezeblock Park portrays the constraints imposed on individuals by class identity and tradition, the suppression of ambition and the younger generation's desire to challenge orthodoxy.

Revealing slight modifications to the original script, the production encapsulates Russell's attentiveness to his own surroundings. Exploring cultural and philosophical questions in an intense yet comical manner, Breezeblock Park had the Playhouse audience in fits of raucous laughter.

Accompanied by pertinent costumes and set, the performance of the 1975 production achieved an excellent recreation of the era. However, with the entirety of the play taking place essentially in the living rooms of two council houses, the strength of the performance centres around the awesome interplay between characters.

Executing brilliant Scouse accents and amusing facial expressions and gestures, the comedy captures the sadness of family life.

ANDREA RANNARD

bbc.co.uk/ on-line review

Of all the plays by Willy Russell, Breezeblock Park may well be his laugh-out-loud funniest. Certainly the audience hilarity at the Liverpool Playhouse last night often reached near fever pitch. But, as with all Russell's plays, there is a more serious side to his comedy, a story of women forced to accept their rather miserable lot. For the most part, it is a Keeping Up Appearances-style tale of two sisters trying to outdo each other with their household purchases.

Betty is hosting a Christmas party and keen to show off her three-piece suite which grows in price on each telling. But sister Reeny arrives and insists on keeping on her coat as the house is a little chilly - she has just had central heating installed, she announces.

Betty's husband Syd couldn't care less while Reeny's husband Ted is a know-all and keen car-owner who insists on staring through the curtains in case anything happens to his vehicle. Their son John just likes staring zombie-like at the television.

Throw in Betty's boozing husband Tommy and his daft wife Vera and you have all the ingredients for an awkward night. And, to add to the fun, Betty's daughter Sandra is pregnant and planning to run off with her posh student boyfriend Tim.

Set in the 1970s - when it was written - Breezeblock Park has a nostalgic feel while retaining characters still familiar today.

Russell keeps it all boiling very happily while director Glen Walford in this production goes straight for the funnybone with a superb ensemble cast. Pauline Daniels is excellent as the hapless Betty, trying to keep up appearances despite every disaster thrown at her. Her monologue about life on a council estate is also most moving.

Michael Starke gets every ounce of fun out of her as husband Syd while Andrew Schofield is a knockout as know-all Ted, the chap who is always trying to outdo the student with a series of questions taken from books.

Neil Caple's "let's go to the pub" Tommy is great and so are the rest of the cast in a comedy where a vibrator mistaken for a cocktail mixer remains one of the great comic ideas.

PHILIP KEY

Liverpool Daily Post

 

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1974 was the year of Wombling Merry Christmas, of Morecambe and Wise dancing with Pan's People and Henry Cooper exhorting blokes to splash it all over. It was also the year that Willy Russell proved he could write structured, well-made plays.

Breezeblock Park, the story of a grisly Christmas on a Liverpool council estate, was so sturdily built that advocates of Russell's looser, more militant style saw it as a betrayal. He was even collared by a furious member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, who accused him of undermining the class struggle by presenting the proletariat in a bad light.

Russell was doing nothing of the sort: he was merely observing that the simmering tensions within all families are most likely to boil over in the pressure cooker of Christmas. But he chose to do so at a time when pressure cookers, fondue sets, hostess trollies and teasmaids were still perceived as a pretty neat idea.

Glen Walford's strongly cast production makes a hugely entertaining period piece, though its comic premise would scarcely be credible today. With branches of Ann Summers in every high street, it is inconceivable that someone would gullibly believe a vibrator to be the latest in cordless cocktail stirrers.

Pauline Daniels turns in a wonderfully pursed performance as Betty, the woman who gets the wrong end of the stick, as it were. And there are fine contributions from the rest of the cast, all of whom seem, with hindsight, to be prototypes for the Royle Family. The programme even reprints a fan letter Russell once received from Caroline Aherne ("I'm 22-and-a-half, full of fun and there's plenty of mileage to be had out of me"). So it's official - you saw them here first.

ALFRED HICKLING

The Guardian