Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides.

The heroine in this actor's tour-de-force is an ordinary middle class English housewife. As she prepares egg and chips for dinner, she ruminates on her life and tells the wall about her husband, her children, her past, and an invitation from a girlfriend to join her on holiday in Greece to search for romance and adventure. Ultimately, Shirley does escape to Greece, has an "adventure" with a local fisherman and decides to stay. This hilariously engaging play was a hit in London and New York, performed by Pauline Collins, who later recreated her role on film garnering an Oscar nomination.

Hairdresser Rita feels that life is passing her by. She wants an education. But does Frank have anything to teach her? Willy Russell's play gives a hilarious - and often moving - account of a young woman's determination to change her life.

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, "Blood Brothers" premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in January 1983.

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. The television play Our Day Out asks what can a group of back-street kids from Liverpool expect from life beyond a rare day out?

Educating Rita, about a working-class Liverpool girl's hunger for education, is 'simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending.' Sunday Times Educating Rita premiered at the RSC Warehouse, London, in June 1980. Voted Best Comedy of 1980, it was subsequently made into a highly successful film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.

Musical drama / 5 male, 3 female, plus small chorus Scenery: Interiors/Exteriors Blood Brothers, by the author of Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, is ahauntying rags to riches tragedy of our times. A woman with numerous children to support surrenders one of her new born twins to the childless woman she cleans for. The boys grow up streets apart, never learning the truth but becoming firm friends and falling in love with the same girl. One prospers while the other falls on hard times. A narrator warns that a price has to be paid for separating twins: the life of the blood brothers who die on the day they find out they are related. "The most exciting thing to have happened to the English musical theatre for years."-Punch "A full bodied musical, a wonderful melodrama that is also a thoroughly modern ballad opera."-Wall Street Journal "There are so many good things to shout and sing about in this new musical."-Daily Mail

Frank is a tutor of English in his fifties whose disillusioned outlook on life drives him to drink and bury himself in his books. Enter Rita, a forthright 26 year-old hairdresser who is eager to learn. After weeks of cajoling, Rita slowly wins over the very hesitant Frank with her innate insight and refusal to accept no for an answer. Their relationship as teacher and student blossoms, ultimately giving Frank a new sense of self and Rita the knowledge she so craves. The play became a hit film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.

Mrs Kay's 'Progress Class' are unleashed for a day's coach trip to Conway Castle in Wales - in an exuberant celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up and being footloose, fourteen and free from school. 'The skill and zest of the show ...derive from its success in following the adult argument through while preserving all the fun of a story mainly played by children ...I have rarely seen a show that combined such warmth and such bleakness.' The Times This edition contains the music to the play.

This revised version of Willy Russell's much loved play won rave reviews when it opened in Liverpool in 2009. Slightly updated and featuring more songs, it retains all the humour and appeal of the original. This educational edition in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan. Building on a decade of highly effective work and publications endorsed by national organisations and supported by teachers and consultants across Britain, each book in the series: meets the new requirements at KS3 and GCSE (2010) features detailed, structured schemes of work utilising drama approaches to improve literary and language analysis places pupils' understanding of the learning process at the heart of the activities will help pupils to boost English GCSE success and develop high-level skills at KS3 will save teachers considerable time devising their own resources. Mrs Kay's Progress Class are off to Alton Towers - until Mr Briggs gets on board. The destination might have changed in this new version of Willy Russell's classic play, but mixing humour, lively songs and the poignancy of the original, this drama of a class day out to remember is ideal for Year 9 and above.

This cynical play by the author of Educating Rita is a comedy of wedding eve nerves set in the loos of a tacky Liverpool club where Dave and Linda, unbeknownst to each other, are having parties.

Superior council house dwellers Betty, Reeny, Vera and their men regard themselves as a close knit family team despite their concealed jealousies and occasional recriminations. When Betty's daughter Sandra announces she is pregnant and intends to live unmarried with her student lover, the news explodes like an atom bomb.4 women, 5 men

'One way of describing Educating Rita would be to say that it was about the meaning of education ... Another would be to say that it was about the meaning of life. A third, that it is a cross between Pygmailion and Lucky Jim. A fourth, that it is simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending.' Sunday Times This new student edition includes an introduction covering the play's context; chronology; dramatic devices; critical reception; production history; and key themes such as class and identity, popular culture and education. Educating Rita portrays a working-class Liverpool woman's hunger for education. It premiered at the RSC Warehouse, London, in 1980 and won the SWET award for Best Comedy of the Year. It was subsequently made into a highly successful film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters and won the 1983 BAFTA award for Best Film. Commentary and notes by Katie Beswick, University of the Arts London.

In Our Day Out Mrs Kay's 'Progress Class' embark on an anarchic school trip to Conwy Castle in Wales. Assisted by the authoritarian Deputy Headmaster, Mr Briggs, the students conspire to steal animals from the zoo and cause as much chaos as possible along the way. This edition also includes the following short plays: The Boy with the Transistor Radio, Terraces and I Read the News Today.

Twin brothers, Mickey and Edward, are separated at birth as their mother cannot afford to keep them both. Raised only streets apart in the heart of Liverpool, the boys' lives take two very different paths. However, following a chance meeting, the pair form an unlikely friendship. But what will happen if they ever find out the secret of their shared history?

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions provide in-depth explanatory material alongside the play texts frequently studied at Key Stage 4. Whether for use in the classroom or independent study, these editions offer a fully comprehensive and lightly glossed play text with accompanying notes specifically directed towards readers of this age, which unravel essential topics and challenge all students to delve further into literary analysis. A well established modern classic, Willy Russell's Blood Brothers tells the story of Mickey and Eddie, twins separated at birth who grow up to lead very opposite lives, but which constantly and inevitably intersect. In addition to some on-page explanatory notes and the play text, this edition contains sub-headed analyses of themes, characters, context and dramatic devices, as well as background information on the playwright. The Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions never lose sight of their readership, and offer students the confidence to engage with the material, explore their own interpretations, and improve their understanding of the works.

This revised version of Willy Russell's much loved play won rave reviews when it opened in Liverpool in 2009. Slightly updated and featuring more songs, it retains all the humour and appeal of the original. This educational edition in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan. Building on a decade of highly effective work and publications endorsed by national organisations and supported by teachers and consultants across Britain, each book in the series: meets the new requirements at KS3 and GCSE (2010) features detailed, structured schemes of work utilising drama approaches to improve literary and language analysis places pupils' understanding of the learning process at the heart of the activities will help pupils to boost English GCSE success and develop high-level skills at KS3 will save teachers considerable time devising their own resources. Mrs Kay's Progress Class are off to Alton Towers - until Mr Briggs gets on board. The destination might have changed in this new version of Willy Russell's classic play, but mixing humour, lively songs and the poignancy of the original, this drama of a class day out to remember is ideal for Year 9 and above.