"I am a regular theatregoer and have been to see many plays, but I have never seen anything quite so excellent as Willy Russell's Our Day Out, currently showing at the Belgrade Theatre.
I would like to echo the points in Mrs. D Grant's letter about the play.
The praise given to Willy Russell, Bob Eaton and the adult actors is most justly deserved but the unsung heroes of this magnificent musical are the talented child actors. These young people are from our schools.
They are all aged between nine and 16 – an age group that is often maligned and given bad press. Recognition needs to be given of their achievement and dedication.
SUE WALLACE
I visited the Belgrade Theatre last night and saw perhaps one of the most stimulating performances I have witnessed at the theatre for years.
If English audiences were not so inhibited then the cast would have received a standing ovation.
The playwright, Willy Russell carries his propagandist intentions with a marked degree of romanticism. But for the most part the kids exuded an uncomfortable sense of reality.
I feel the Belgrade ought to do a week of performance which Coventry’s directors of education, staff and teachers would be required to attend.
It seems to me that educational difficulties are now coming home to roost after decades of superficial direction by national ministers and local directors.
Coventry parades its educational concerns by claiming to offer an education enabling children to realize their potential, a claim which draws upon the myth that a child’s behaviour is determined by the operation of non-cultural factors. Total nonsense. A con which particularly disadvantages working class children.
Willy Russell’s Our Day Out does not provide an answer to today’s educational problems but it does attempt to lift the claptrap which obscures those problems.
JOHN LINSIE
…Having read Mrs. D Grant’s letter (Your Views, Sept 18th) praising Willy Russell’s Our Day Out production recently at The Belgrade, I too agree it was a flawless production but would disagree that it could be a West End musical success!
While Mrs Grant praised the gifted youngsters – she failed to mention the continuous flow of onscene language in the production, so repetitive that it became boring and lost its shock impact.
The song that was performed by two small girls called “Bleeding Boring” (with a few more expletives thrown in) failed to capture my imagination.
This, along with children appearing on stage with inflated condoms on their heads and also displaying condoms as blown up balloons would hardly make a spectacular production dance routine.
Give me Lloyd Webber any day!
Mrs Eileen D Golding
I was one of a small group who attended the Belgrade to see Our Day Out.
We applauded the performance, especially that of the youngsters, but deprecated the frequent use of foul language, the apparent humour (?) raised by the thief of the contraceptive dispenser, together with the use of it’s contents, and the theft of the animals from a zoo’s pets corner.
While accepting that various aspects may all be reflections of real-life situations, it seemed to us that the trivialisation of foul language, vandalism and theft could hardly be considered as an acceptable code of behaviour to put before any impressionable person, especially youngsters.
B. S. Johnson
