Educating Rita - Review
The Lewis Gilbert film, starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters, proved to be such a pivotal film for both actors that it’s easy to forget that Educating Rita started life as a stage play. Those more familiar with its film incarnation might be surprised to discover Willie Russell’s play is a two hander that takes place entirely within the confines of Dr Frank Bryant’s study. In this brisk revival, director Mark Roberts demonstrates how effectively this focuses on play’s central issues, so that without distraction we see Rita’s subtle development largely in the mind’s eye, and through the unreliable narration of her character.
Jessica Johnson quickly made the character her own on the opening night at the Theatre Royal, wittering endlessly as she vacillated between stroppiness and nervousness, desperate to legitimise her appearance in the study of the University don that doesn’t want her, or anyone else, to get in the way of his furtive drinking. Stephen Tompkinson provides the perfect foil for her, nicely underplaying an academic full of poison and bluster, yet symmetrically vulnerable and wallowing in failure. They make for an odd couple, and it’s not immediately clear whether it is the characters or the actors that lack chemistry. We will subsequently learn that it’s the former, and that the slow burn of the first half of the play proved, in hindsight, to be very effective. There are moments where the decision to take time growing their relationship sits uneasily with the text. It is as if the director hasn’t noticed that particular lines – Frank’s queasy compliments are like potholes in the road – don’t fit with the approach taken, and to that extent it’s a shame some minor tinkering wasn’t undertaken. This is, however, a minor quibble given the care and attention paid elsewhere. The play is now forty years old, and while perhaps not yet a period drama, due regard is given to clothes and set design. Its episodic structure – the play is made up of a series of tutorial sessions – affords Rita the opportunity to change from one eighties outfit to another, which allied to subtle shifts in her hairstyle and accent, discreetly signal her development.
Tellingly, Frank remains unchanged throughout. While he undoubtedly has a drink problem, it is only as the plot develops (and significantly only when Rita began to grow away from him) that we see him drunk, when Tompkinson gives a bravura performance of a man who has disgraced himself and is yet unrepentant. It is as if Roberts allowed him one star turn, unleashing the comic potential we know he has. It is a pivotal moment, as Rita turns from student to carer, and is tremendously well done by both actors. Thereafter Rita doesn’t so much need Frank’s support, as she’s too busy supporting him, something she tries to do through judgement of his poetry. In the play’s most effective, and heart breaking, moment they wrestle over the worth of his prose, and here we see Russell at his best. Cleverly avoiding an explicit examination of the poems, the audience is never given the opportunity to assess the work. Rather, our sympathies ping-pong back and forth. Is Frank a self-pitying, but wrongheaded genius in denial at his own worth, or is she a pretentious ingénue, who has lost honesty and integrity while scrabbling to the top of the academic dung heap? It’s an even handed debate, and this production refuses us the comfort of coming down on one side or the other. Instead, all involved seem to understand that Russell wasn’t about taking sides – being far more interested in a catalytic reaction of personalities clashing, taking them where circumstances dictate, without easy answers or comfortable resolutions.
There is no denying that the play has dated. The idea that a working-class woman would be liberated from her claustrophobic, and limiting, environments through a study of Forster and Blake seems a tad patronising, even quaint. While Russell pays lip service to rebutting the idea, the bottom line is that she is more self-assured, and better equipped to deal with lives vicissitudes, as a result of reading poetry and meeting people who know what an iambic parameter is. In these times of zero hour contracts and savage education cuts it feels like a fanciful idea, but I wonder if it was ever so. A generation later, Jarvis Cocker explored the contradictions and complexities of working class life with greater subtly and nuance, and did so in a matter of minutes – by comparison this play feels like a blunt instrument. Nonetheless this production goes some way to tacitly acknowledge the problem, shifting the emphasis so that the play now looks far more about Frank’s journey, or rather his refusal to budge, than it does Rita’s growth, which in hindsight seems more to do with her dogged self-determination than Frank’s benign influence.
