Educating Rita (Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Willy Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2001 | Series: Modern Classics

A poignant and hilarious play about a working class Liverpool girl's hunger for education.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Educating Rita, about a working-class Liverpool girl's hunger for education, is "simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending."—Sunday Times

About the Author

Willy Russell, born in Whiston near Liverpool, is one of the most popular and successful contemporary playwrights whose works are studied in schools and colleges. His plays include: One for the Road, Stags and Hens, Educating Rita, Blood Brothers and Shirley Valentine.

Product Details

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Methuen Drama (May 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0413767906
• ISBN-13: 978-0413767905
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You've seen the movie now read the play..., March 26, 2005

By 

Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Educating Rita (Longman Literature) (Paperback)

Another thrift shop bargain that I picked up by chance. Like most people I've seen the movie with Michael Caine and Julie Walters but I wanted to see what they "play" version was like with only "Rita" and "Frank" seen at any given moment.

It is actually quite enlightening, the discourse is perky and colourful and the other characters we verbally "meet" in the play are only one dimensional in the sense they are talked about but never seen by the audience. However this does not make them any less real and we soon start to believe in their existence even though we never get to see them in the flesh.

This particular Longman book is quite good in that it gives a sturdy and interesting preface from Willy Russell himself, along with a fairly comprehensive glossary at the end and a reasonable study programme, rather basic if you are a graduate student but still useful for anyone who is a literature buff, be they beginner or expert.

Not bad for a book that cost less than a dollar is all I can say!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ouch! I resemble that remark!, May 1, 2004

By 

Laurence K. Cantor "El Casey" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Educating Rita (Modern Classics) (Paperback)

I'm exactly Willy Russell's age. I wonder how much of Willy he's invested in Frank, the male half of this 2 character play. There's more of me in him than I am comfortable exploring. That's unfortunate because I've been assigned the first scene of Educating Rita as an acting class exercise. It's quite a good play, really; better than 3 stars perhaps but not quite worthy of 4. It's a polemic from 1980 in which Russell unburdened himself of some of his views about the working class; that alone seems a little quaint from this side of the Pond and the Millenial divide. The fact is that Rita is a wonderful character, a true heroine. She is a classic Shavian philistine on her way to becoming a realist which as any student of Shaw knows is the highest form to which humans may aspire. I wish I was meant to play Rita. Unfortunately, Frank feels more like a foil than a character, at least after 2 readings of the play. Ben Kingsley said, after Nasty Beast, that you have to find something in even the most despicable character which you love in order to play him. Good luck. Frank is pathetic. He lives behind walls designed to protect him from having to live. The walls of academia, for one, the walls of the pub, for another. Finally there are the walls of books in his University office behind which he hides his whiskey bottles. So fifty-something Frank meets twenty-six year-old Rita. Although he is a catalyst in her great awakening, he fails to have one of his own. Unlike Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation, he lacks the insight and the decency to understand that this relationship, regardless of how much it does for him, simply cannot be. As a result the play seems to end on a very hollow, sour note. Or am I missing something?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Script Plus Bonus Information, April 30, 2011

By 

Jim K "Jim in Boston" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Educating Rita (Methuen Drama Student Editions) (Paperback)

This version of Educating Rita is quite extensive. My wife and I saw the play recently and I wanted to review some of the dialogue to get more from it. This edition contains all the dialogue, stage directions, etc that you'd expect plus a lot of background information on the playwright. Good value and good information.