Educating Rita
by Willy Russell

18th - 20th March 2010 
(PRODUCTION NOW COMPLETE)

Educating Rita follows the relationship between Rita, a young Liverpudlian working-class hairdresser and Frank Bryant, a middle-aged University lecturer, during the course of a year. Rita is dissatisfied with the routine of her work and social life, and she seeks inner growth by signing up for and attending an Open University course in English Literature. The play opens as Rita meets her tutor, Frank for the first time. Frank Bryant is a middle-aged, alcoholic career academic who has taken on the tutorship to pay for his drink. The two have an immediate and profound effect on one another; Frank is impressed by Rita’s verve and earnestness and is forced to re-examine his attitudes and position in life; Rita finds Frank's tuition opens doors to a bohemian lifestyle and a new self-confidence. However, Frank's bitterness and cynicism return as he notices Rita beginning to adopt the pretensions of the University culture he despises. Rita 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.