‘Educating Rita’ explores freedom and change
Hairdresser seeks to lift herself out of British working class
Rita is a 26-year-old Liverpool hairdresser convinced that education will free her from the constraints of her social class. Frank is a disillusioned English tutor whose dreary outlook drives him to drink and bury himself in books.
Willy Russell’s “Educating Rita” will bring together this mismatched pair on Friday, May 5, at the VSA North Fourth Art Center.
“I love Rita’s journey in the play,” director and West End Productions founding member Colleen Neary McClure said. “It’s her mission to learn; she wants to become an intellectual.”
Russell wrote and set the play, now considered a modern classic, in 1980.
“It’s very much to do with the times in Liverpool,” McClure said. “A lot of students left (school) at 15.
“It was written by a man, and he’s able to inhabit the lives of women,” she added. “It’s a little bit autobiographical, because he left school at 15, and
the choice was the bottle factory or becoming a hairdresser. He became a hairdresser. He went back to school in his 20s.”
Rita is determined to complete her education before having the children demanded by her husband, Denny.
“She just thought, ‘I’m married; I’m stuck,’” McClure said.
Soon Denny gives Rita a choice: Stop studying or get out.
Frank is an alcoholic upperclass professor living in a loveless relationship. Rita’s tuition pays for his booze.
Charismatic and forthright, Rita motivates Frank to prepare her for her exams to be admitted to the university while she leaves her husband.
Russell weaves themes of freedom, change, the British class system and the shortcomings of institutional education throughout the script. McClure says many these issues still resonate.
“If we’re talking about England, I still think, particularly among the working class, young girls still leave (school) early,” she said. “I don’t think the educational system works for them.
“I still do think women have to prove they’re intellectually equal to men all over the world.”
“Educating Rita” stars Jessica Osbourne as Rita and Frederick Ponzlov as Frank.