pAdministrative Director Chris Bullock(Back Left) with the new playhouse team, From right Chris Bond, Bill Morrison, Willy Russell(Standing) and Alan Bleasdale. 19th Feb 1981.
ONE of the leading lights of Liverpool theatre’s creative boom in the 1980s has died.
Bill Morrison was one of the celebrated Gang of Four creative team at the Playhouse with Alan Bleasdale, Willy Russell and Chris Bond.
The writer, whose most celebrated work Flying Blind was heralded as a “sensational piece of writing” by his friend and contemporary Bleasdale, died at his Liverpool home yesterday morning.
The 71-year-old Ulsterman was also a writer in residence at the Liverpool Everyman and the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent.
Tributes to Morrison, who was also an actor and director, were beginning to pour in last night.
One of the first to speak of his shock and sadness on hearing the news of the death yesterday was Alan Bleasdale.
He told the Daily Post: “Bill was a remarkable writer and a great teacher.
“There were times when Willy Russell and I stooped at the knee to listen to Bill because he knew more than we would ever know.
“It should also be remembered with a passion that Flying Blind was one of the great plays of the twentieth century.
“It was a brilliant play, a sensational piece of writing.”
