Rachel Russell talks about directing father Willy’s Our Day Out in Liverpool

Sep 24 2009 Flintshire Chronicle

Rachel Russell talks about directing father Willy’s Our Day Out in Liverpool

A LOT of young Liverpool directors would be pretty star-struck working on a new production with Willy Russell, but the assistant director of Our Day Out has had plenty of time to get used to the playwright – she’s his daughter, after all.

It’s with a proven track record of London-based work that Rachel Russell comes to the Royal Court for the reworked version of the comedy about an eventful school trip, transformed into a full musical by its writer (her dad) and director Bob Eaton.

“I said to him early on that I would have to call him Willy,” says the 29-year-old. “I couldn’t be sitting in a production meeting and call him ‘Dad’ across the room, it would be too strange.

“But it always feels like he’s a bit involved in every production I work on because I’m always phoning him to ask his advice.”

Rachel has directed the play before, at the age of 10 with a group of school friends in the local church hall. She played the part of Linda, one of the pupils.

“We got all our parents to come down,” she recalls. “I’m still friends with lots of the people in it, and they’ve all arranged to come and see the show.”

Rachel trained at Middlesex University and completed a directing internship at the HB studios in New York. Early production jobs included working on an Everyman panto and Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Liverpool Playhouse.

“It’s great to be back in Liverpool and to have come full circle,” she says. “I’ve really being enjoying it and the whole atmosphere at the Royal Court is really exciting.”

She is mid-rehearsal and has been working with the young people in the cast, who are all under 16.

Despite the show’s transformation, there will be plenty of the original plot in there for fans of the stage play or the 1977 TV film – just don’t expect to see a school bus.

“Bob decided to come up with something that wouldn’t restrict the amount of space we have to work with, which using the inside of a bus would have.

“So we’ve got rid of that and are using black boxes with wheels on that sometimes stand for a bus and sometimes a castle or another scene, and we have a lot of audiovisuals, too.”

Our Day Out – The Musical opens at the Royal Court runs until October 17.