Willy
Russell was in the pub before the first preview of his play, Educating Rita. The
Liverpool-born playwright’s seriously funny two-hander about a hairdresser who
enrols on an Open University literature course was about to open at the Royal
Shakespeare Company’s rough and ready Warehouse space in what is now the Donmar,
and he and director Mike Ockrent were seeking nervous refuge. They knew that
the RSC had taken a chance on the play, and even though Russell had already had
a west end hit a few years before with his Beatles-based musical, John, Paul,
George, Ringo…and Bert, neither of them were sure what the response would be.
“The
Warehouse was in what was then quite a seedy part of Covent Garden, a bit like
what Mathew Street was like when the original Cavern was there,” a now
72-year-old Russell remembers. “Mike and I were in the Crown pub, and we didn’t
know what to expect. Julie Walters was playing Rita, but she had yet to become
the great and much revered Julie Walters that she rather wonderfully became.
I’d done a few things as well, but none of us were what you’d call a draw. Then
Mike nudged me, I looked out the window, and there was a queue. To this day I
don’t know why that was, but there seemed to be something in the air.”
Forty
years on, Educating Rita has become a modern classic. Ockrent’s original
production, which also featured Mike Kingston as Rita’s jaded tutor Frank, saw
Walters nominated for an Olivier Award for comedy performance of the year,
while the play itself won the award for best comedy. Russell went on to write
the screenplay for Lewis Gilbert’s big-screen version in 1983, which saw
Walters reprise her role as Rita opposite Michael Caine as Frank.
Since
then, numerous stage productions have made Educating Rita a perfect vehicle for
actors who can bring depth to some of the play’s glorious one-liners. It
currently falls to an already acclaimed Jessica Johnson to take up Rita’s
mantle opposite Stephen Tompkinson as Frank in Theatre by the Lake’s fortieth
anniversary touring production, which arrives in Glasgow next week prior to
Edinburgh dates in May. If things had worked out differently, however,
Russell’s play might never have happened at all.
“Back
then, I didn’t think I was the sort of writer who would be associated with the
Royal Shakespeare Company,” says Russell. “I’d started at the Everyman in
Liverpool, and I wrote about things I didn’t think the RSC would be interested
in. But their literary manager Walter Donohue had seen my play Breezeblock
Park, with Julie Walters and Pete Postlethwaite, and he saw something. But even
after I’d come up with Educating Rita, the response from the RSC wasn’t very
enthusiastic, and unbeknownst to me, something I was only told years later, was
that it had been sent to the Royal Court, who dismissed it as what they called
a boulevard comedy.
“Eventually
it was seen by Trevor Nunn, who had pretty much everybody in the RSC in
Nicholas Nickleby, and even when it went on, they still didn’t know what they
had until the reviews came in. Because of apathy and prejudice, it’s perfectly
possible it might never have gone on, but that’s theatre. It’s not a science.”
Educating
Rita struck a chord with audiences from the start. This had much to do with
Russell’s desire to make his contemporary Pygmalion connect with the sort of
people his play was about.
“I knew
when I started on the play I didn’t just want it to appeal to the Franks of
this world. I wanted it to be for women like my mother, who weren’t afraid of
books and art. I wanted it to connect with the Ritas in the audience as well.”
Like
Rita, Russell had become a hairdresser after leaving school when he was fifteen,
and his story of the sort of social mobility that is less likely to happen
these days was closer to home than even Russell recognised.
“It was
pointed out to me I was writing about myself and my own return to education. That
stopped me in my tracks, because when I’m writing, I have to feel like I’m
drawing things from my own imagination. Only later was I made to realise that
Educating Rita is actually autobiographical, even though it’s about a woman. I
wanted it to be about a woman, and I wanted it to be a love story – not a
romantic love story – but a story about two people who, if they’re not in love,
then will love each other for the rest of their lives.
“Salvation
for Rita came through education in a way that probably couldn’t happen now,
with all those one-to-one tutorials between Rita and Frank. Today, Frank
wouldn’t have the luxury of that, because he’d be responsible for 300 students,
and wouldn’t have the time. But, despite the fact that we set it very much in
the time it was written in, it’s just as relevant today as it was then. That’s
because at the centre of the play is a human being striving for something
better, and that is a basic and primal experience”
Russell
quotes from Paul Simon’s song, Train in the Distance
“The
thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our
brains,” he says.
Russell
too is still striving. Inbetween directing students at Liverpool Institute of
Performing Arts, he’s working on “something I’d vaguely describe as a memoirist
piece. And I’m doing a lot of painting.”
Russell
sounds both shy and surprised by the latter admission. This probably dates back
to art classes at school.
“I was
slapped round the head and told to get out of class, and that the only thing I
was likely to draw was the dole. Then, in my fifties, I found myself picking up
a brush, and now I’m taking lessons, so I’m a student again. There’s someone at
the front of the class who knows more than me. I’m back to being Rita.”
Educating
Rita, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, February 24-29; King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, May
11-16.
The Herald, February 20th 2020
ends
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