![]() This production transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End from 8 July to 30 October 2010, produced by Sonia Friedman. This was the production's first London West End revival. įrom 26 March to, as part of the Willy Russell season at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Laura Dos Santos reprised her radio performance on stage as Rita alongside Larry Lamb as Frank. The production was directed by Bruce Paltrow and was critically acclaimed with critics touting McKenzie's performance as "wonderfully beguiling and irrepressible.one of the best performances of the year". įrom June to July 2001, the Williamstown Theatre Festival mounted a production of Educating Rita at the Nikos Stage starring Jacqueline McKenzie as Rita and Edward Herrmann as Frank. In 1987, Laurie Metcalf starred as Rita in a production Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre produced by the Steppenwolf Theater Company. It starred Bill Nighy and Laura Dos Santos directed by Kirsty Williams, and was a 90-minute play broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Boxing Day 2009. The play was adapted by Russell for radio in 2009. The play was adapted by Russell for a 1983 film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters, directed by Lewis Gilbert. The play borrows from the 1913 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, itself based upon archetypes from Greek myth. The play deals with the concept of freedom, change, Britain's class system, the shortcomings of institutional education, and the nature of self-development and of personal relationships. The play ends as Frank, sent to Australia on a sabbatical, welcomes the possibilities of the change. Susan becomes disillusioned by a friend's attempted suicide and realises that her new social niche is rife with the same dishonesty and superficiality she had previously sought to escape. However, Frank's bitterness and cynicism return as he notices Susan beginning to adopt the pretensions of the university culture he despises. ![]() The two have an immediate and profound effect on one another Frank is impressed by Susan's verve and earnestness and is forced to re-examine his attitudes and position in life Susan finds Frank's tutelage opens doors to a bohemian lifestyle and a new self-confidence. Frank is a middle-aged, alcoholic career academic who has taken on the tutorship to pay for his drink. ![]() The play opens as 'Rita' meets her tutor, Frank, for the first time. Susan (who initially calls herself Rita), dissatisfied with the routine of her work and social life, seeks inner growth by signing up for and attending an Open University course in English Literature. ![]() In the play Frank has no surname, but when the film was made he became Dr. The plays follows the relationship between a 26-year-old Liverpudlian working class hairdresser and Frank, a middle-aged university lecturer, during the course of a year. It is a play for two actors set entirely in the office of an Open University tutor.Ĭommissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Educating Rita premièred at The Warehouse, London, in June 1980 starring Julie Walters and Mark Kingston. Although Educating Rita is set long after the Victorian era, certain elements of this societal division remain at play in this otherwise-contemporary narrative, as Rita works hard to rise up from her working-class background.Pygmalion-style drama about a hairdresser's literary quest.Įducating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. Needless to say, the working and under class were severely disenfranchised and had very little access to education. In the Victorian era, for example, British society was broken up into the noble upper class (which included aristocrats, dukes, and rich families working in the courts), the middle class, the working class, and the under class. In light of this, readers should bear in mind that in the past, England has been starkly divided along socioeconomic lines. As noted in the revised edition of Educating Rita, Willy Russell has gone through the text to “address those areas where there were very, very specific references to the time in which the play was originally written.” Indeed, he has taken out these “specific references” so that “the play can be perceived as taking place in its own time.” Having said that, it’s worth acknowledging that Educating Rita is set in England and deals with the difference between the country’s social classes.
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