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
Willy Wonka Depp as Willy Wonka may be a stone freak, but he is also one of Burton's classic crackpot conjurers, like "Beetlejuice" or "Ed Wood"." Mick LaSalle from the "San Francisco Chronicle" found that "all the laughs [in the film] come from Depp, who gives Willy the mannerisms of a classic Hollywood diva". Roger Ebert wrote "Depp, an actor of considerable gifts, has never been afraid to take a chance, but this time he takes the wrong one. His Willy Wonka is an enigma in an otherwise mostly delightful movie from Tim Burton," while Peter Travers wrote in "Rolling Stone" magazine