EDUCATING RITA

EDUCATING RITA
at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch

25.04.2017

for the Reviews Hub

Willy Russell's classic two-hander is revised - “revitalised” according to the publicity – in this production at the Queen's.
Two things set it apart: the stage is extended into the auditorium, with audience on three sides of Frank's untidy university study. And the action has been transported from Merseyside to our own Essex, perhaps in the hope that Rita's inspiring story will find a new resonance, and enhanced relevance, for the theatre-goers of Havering and district.
In truth these are of marginal significance. There is more space to fill with the nicely designed chaos of Frank's filing system – though as so often the books on the shelves fail to convince. The two actors, though, spend much time moving around in order to vary the view. And the setting, as always, is a fantasy – an Open University student getting one-to-one tutorials in a seat of learning that is redbrick, if not older, all within easy reach of, say, Romford High Street. No chance, squire.
Ros Philip's pacy production boasts two fine performances from teacher and student. Ruairi Conaghan, scruffy, bearded, piss-artist and “British poet” neatly captures the frustration of the lecturer who's tired of the academic life. He's particularly effective in his drunken collapse, sleeping on a heap of essays, and in his more thoughtful moments. Smoking hunched over his Remington a memorable stage picture. Danielle Flett is superb as the gobby hairdresser: eager, nervous, hungry to learn everything, starting with the meaning of “assonance”. She's totally convincing in her metamorphosis to confident, articulate young woman. Her flirtatious approach to Frank is tellingly done, culminating in the stylist's seduction which ends the play. A riveting performance.
Written in 1980, this is very much a play for its time, and Hornchurch wisely resist the temptation to update as well as uproot. The short scenes are punctuated by juke-box hits: The Police, Abba, Madness, Status Quo. With folk and the Four Seasons on Frank's transistor – cultural relativism one of the underlying themes.
The main theme, of course, is the transformative power of education – in this case English Literature: Blake and Forster, Yeats and Shakespeare. As a perceptive essay in the programme points out, much has changed since Rita burst through the door into the alien world of academia. Students now incur heavy debts for what was free back then. Few now seriously consider learning for its own sake to be an engine of social mobility. And the shared assumptions that made Russell's comedy so successful for years are largely gone.
Nonetheless, this straightforward, honest production still packs a punch, and raises awkward questions about education in today's classless society, even if cathartic laughter is in short supply.

production photograph: Mark Sepple

EDUCATING RITA

EDUCATING RITA

Made in Colchester at the Mercury Theatre

28.02.2015

for The Public Reviews

In our celebrity-sated, fifteen-minutes-of-fame fixated world, is education still seen as the road to personal fulfilment and life-changing cultural freedom ?

Rita first burst into Frank's study thirty-five years ago. Wisely, this first-rate revival, directed by Patrick Sandford for Made in Colchester, sets the action in the 80s, without ever making it a period piece.

Key to the drama, and to Frank's complex character, is Juliet Shillingford's superbly designed set. The kind you feel tempted to nip up on stage to explore. Shelves tower upwards, crammed with books and random bric-a-brac: here's a naked fiddle reclining on the phone books. And presiding over the action, over-sized photos of the dead white men who people Frank's literary life: an avuncular Eliot, a youthful, thoughtful, Forster. A Bronte obscured on the back of the door. And looming over it all, Rubens' Samson and Delilah, foreshadowing the neat tonsorial twist at the end of the play.

Nakedly erotic, of course, and the sexual chemistry between the student and her mentor is intriguingly explored here – the affair they never have, Innocence and Experience, the broken analogy, the Gauloises she'll never smoke – in characterizations as satisfying as any I've seen in these roles.

Samantha Robinson is the young hairdresser who “wants to understand everything”. We watch in wonder as she blossoms under the influence of literature and the student life, her foot trembling with excitement, one revelation after another lighting up her eager features. Telling costume changes reflect her journey from frustrated wife to fulfilled graduate – the little black number Frank pathetically offers her yet another blow to their failed physical relationship.

Dougal Lee is a brilliant Frank – totally convincing as the geriatric hippy, poet and piss-artist who reluctantly takes on an unknown Open University student to fund his boozing. His inebriated return from the lecture hall is masterly; gloriously, physically drunk, but vulnerable and tragic too.

The dialogue crackles along, the changing seasons suggested by falling leaves, a flurry of snow, and, more inventively, by the one-bar fire and the lighting of the many anglepoise lamps, or the fan whirring to life behind the Remington.

The production, like the set, is crammed with delightful detail – in the course of a few seconds, Rita has amended her name on the enrolment, and Frank has deliberately put down the un-put-downable Rita Mae Brown.

We leave our heroine with all her options open, and her life before her. She'll be in her sixties now, perhaps running an organic café-cum-bookshop on Lark Lane. Does she wonder about the next generation of Ritas, desperate for better songs to sing. She suspects, sadly, that the Open University would be the last place they'd look ...

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

EDUCATING RITA

Greville Players at the Barn Theatre

11.11.09

Celebrating their half-century, the Greville Players continue a much older tradition in the old tithe barn, which once saw Wells, Shaw and Terry on its boards.

This pacy production brought out all the humour and pathos of the strange chemistry between the jaded lecturer, surviving on Scotch, and the gobby hairdresser with a hungry mind, determined to change her life through English Literature.

From the moment she scurried through the auditorium in search of the door to Frank's office and a new beginning, it was clear that this would be a definitive performance from Carol Parradine as the OU student caught between two cultures. Voice, accent, demeanour were all absolutely right for the part – a joy to watch. And she neatly mapped the transformation over the play's many scenes, till she is behind the desk, calling the shots, a success to eclipse Frank's failure.

Adam Thompson's Frank was a lost soul, enthusiastic but unfocused, a reluctant Pygmalion to Rita's latter-day Eliza. I liked the way he became increasingly desperate as his facile teaching techniques were revealed as inadequate faced with a student as individual as Susan, though I imagine him as a little more lined and lived-in … His clothes were unfeasibly natty, I felt.

I liked the trim-phone on the desk; I was less convinced by Frank's certificates and his skivertex books.

This is a didactic play, revisiting themes dear to Willy Russell's heart. As Rita says when she explains her hairdresser's philosophy, change must come from within, and in this play education is the key to that change.

It is thirty years old now, and I'm not sure it updates all that well – I've said before that I'm not convinced that education is seen now as an agent for social change. And the Open University has changed almost beyond recognition over the years.

But a polished revival of an important and entertaining play. Educating Rita was produced for the Greville Players by Jan Ford, and directed by John Richardson.