13/06/2026
Sharing our third review for Educating Rita.
Thank you Richard at Auteur House
Last show tonight at 7.30 pm get your tickets from The Meteor or at the door.
Was invited by Our Theatre Company to their production of Educating Rita last night at The Meteor. Would strongly urge attendance of the closing performance, tonight, at the same venue.
Find below my review.
Film adaptations of comparatively unknown plays can in a sense have a detrimental effect on the original material. If unsuccessful, they threaten to poison the well. If positively received, they can equally overshadow. The film Educating Rita, enjoying BAFTA and Golden Globe accolades and Oscar nominations, both revived Michael Caine's career and launched Julie Walters into what seemed to be certain stardom. It was commonly thought a triumph.
As a somewhat younger person, 43 years ago, I was rather prone to romantic conceptions of literature and the idea of alcoholic dons and professors who might effortlessly impart its wisdom. That said, having anticipated a May-December relationship film, I'm not sure Educating Rita left much of a lasting impression beyond being an excellent vehicle for its charismatic players. Mostly, I remember musing on how the couple did not get together, something of a novelty at the time and not an entirely satisfactory one.
Written by W***y Russell in 1980 and revised somewhat 23 years later, as a play Educating Rita deserves to be much better known in its own right, independent of memories of Caine, Walters and the journeyman director who brought it to the screen, Lewis Gilbert. A well conceived drama, addressing issues of class, gender politics and pedagogy, although Russell chooses to more directly reference Frankenstein it could be seen as another contemporary, post-Shaw variation on the myth of Pygmalion. An unhappy, self-loathing, thirsty, middle aged career academic and one-time poet, tutors an unhappy but culturally curious working class hairdresser, coming to resent aspects of her intellectual growth.
Under the direction of Owen Mooney, the Hamilton collective Our Theatre Company's production, at The Meteor theatre, presented the play in what Mooney describes as a "traverse layout", the stage flanked by tiered seating on either side. The set, composed of a desk and bookshelf at one end and door frame at the other, with a second desk to one side, represented the academic's office, a forum for a series of interactions over a number of months, the time ellipses in between each indicated by momentary darkness.
In a two-hander such as this there is nowhere to hide. Happily, both actors were outstanding, exceptionally well cast, with precise understanding of their character's essence and story arc. It is safe to assume that Jared Wooldridge, an English teacher by day, brings considerable first hand knowledge of the teaching of literature and the chores of marking, the part of Frank being most challenging when it comes to the bending of the elbow. Abigail Von Ahsen, employing a broad Liverpudlian accent as Susan - known as Rita - also taps into second hand experience, drawing upon her own mother's background.
The ebb and flow of Frank and Rita's relationship, though inherently a power struggle, is never just that. Rita's desire for self-improvement and an enriched and deeper understanding of life contrasts with the jaded, world weariness of a teacher well versed in the difference between true education and the passing of examinations and increasingly keen to impart the lesson. Rita yearns for institutional respect, Frank appreciates its limited worth, coming to question his initial insistence on literary references in response to set readings and assignments, desiring instead the honesty of individual, subjective response.
The chemistry between the actors is beyond what could be coached. The fact that romance is sidestepped in favour of a far more interesting platonic relationship does not exclude a certain amount of flirtation, the lecturer at least willing to ask the question, decades before Me Too, but perfectly comfortable when rebuffed. Von Ahsen's Rita, never a victim, grows credibly, acquiring confidence consistent with an embracing of conceptual thought, transcending the limitations of her initial environment, to the point where she threatens to herself become the teacher. It is a wonderfully realised, detailed, energetic performance, as Rita is by turns amusing, defensive, insecure, brash and borderline arrogant. If Frank's trajectory is not as grand or evolutionary, touching as it consistently does upon his bottomless reserves of self pity, Wooldridge is equally note perfect. A scene in which Frank hits an all time low, drunkenly collapsing upon the ground, is beautifully executed, at once pathetic and physically comic.
As much as period costuming and turns of phrase, the material's approach to literary debate dates it back to the time in which the play was written and first performed. Today's English departments, at least at tertiary level, are hotbeds of ideology, less inclined to muse on the texts themselves. In this context passing references to F.R. Leavis or even the comparatively simple idea of Marxism sound almost as quaint as the suggestion that William Blake and E.M. Forster might be approached as works of art, for literary art's sake. Today's Frank would be schooling Rita in post-modernism, post-colonialism or requiring an analysis of Foucault's complete works as a prelude to opening any book or reading any poem.
The decline of western universities could not have been anticipated by W***y Russell. As a humanistic work which engages with more conventional or at least older notions of art and its relationship to lived experience, Educating Rita has a timeless appeal. The Hamilton production, featuring a pair of fully rounded, highly intelligent performances more than did it justice. Its programme referenced a running time of three hours but such was the impeccable pacing and warmth of the characters that it seemed half that and left you wanting more.
