Educating Rita

Theatre Royal, Glasgow
3 stars
It may be more than thirty years since Willy Russell’s Thatcher-era 
two-hander of working-class aspiration first appeared, but, with higher 
education once again becoming the preserve of a privileged elite, 
there’s an accidental poignancy to what is essentially a platonic 
rom-com with knobs on. Tamara Harvey’s touring production, co-produced 
by the Chocolate Factory and Theatre Royal Bath, nails its Scouse 
colours to the mast from the off by using orchestral instrumental 
versions of Beatles songs as pre-show music. When pop got ideas above 
its station in this way and went classical, the legion of mop-topped 
auto-didacts that came out of the closet were clearly kin of Russell’s 
Rita.

Claire Sweeney is almost too perfectly cast as the gobby hairdresser 
who breezes into the book-lined study of clapped-out Open University 
lecturer Frank, played with warm-hearted diffidence by Matthew Kelly. 
As they move through a succession of 1980s cosy cardies, there’s a 
knowing brio in the pair’s exchanges that captures Russell’s sense of 
cross-class co-dependency, even as the student outgrows her teacher. 
Having brought each other back to life, if Frank is a pickled hangover 
of a more patrician era, one only hopes Rita doesn’t lose her common 
touch to some of the era’s more materialistic pursuits beyond knowledge.

While on one level Russell’s play is a rose-tinted time capsule of a 
more open British education system, it also offers a glimpse of what is 
– or was – possible. One still can’t help but wonder about all the 
latter-day Ritas who slip through the net. Perhaps they don’t have the 
hunger of Russell’s heroine. Or perhaps they just weren’t given the 
chance to change themselves enough to find their voice.

The Herald, May 30th2012

ends