Stags and Hens Stags and Hens Stags and Hens is a play written by Willy Russell. Like most of Willy Russell's work, the play discusses working class society in England in the 1970s. It makes comments about the working class' intellect, life, party habits and the exclusion of the different. It was originally written in 1978 for television and drama students of the then-Manchester Polytechnic, as an in-house television production. It was first published as a script in 1986 in a collection with Educating Rita and Blood Brothers. Russell adapted it for performance in 2008 as 'Stags and Hens - The Remix' at
Educating Rita (film) The Stag's Head. Filming also took place in Stonybatter with Aughrim St Church being used for the wedding scene. Stanhope St school was used as a production base. The American "Variety" magazine in December 1982 lauded Walters' interpretation of Rita as "[w]itty, down-to-earth, kind and loaded with common sense." "Rita," the review continues, "is the antithesis of the humorless, stuffy and stagnated academic world she so longs to infiltrate. Julie Walters injects her with just the right mix of comedy and pathos." Ian Nathan reviewing the film for Britain's "Empire" film magazine calls the film a "gem," and gives it