Customer Reviews

Educating Rita

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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?

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.

As we watch Rita become educated, we are able to see the effects of education on both Frank and Rita. In a world that idolizes education as the ultimate means to improving quality of life and as a benchmark of success, the play is a challenging question about the true worth and effects of education, especially institutional education. I highly recommend this for anyone who's ever asked whether a graduate degree would truly be a good idea.

Willy Russell wrote a play about a woman who tries to find herself by being educated.Her name is Rita. She reads a lot of books and with the help of her professor Frank she is also able to understand them. She becomes independent, she leaves her husband and changes her life completely. At the end she doesn't need her teacher any longer and they go separate ways. The tragic point of the play is that Rita can't really improve her life inspite of all education. She can't go back to her former life, but she hasn't a new one yet. Frank is going to Australia, after loosing his job, because he is an alcoholic.

The play is interesting, but there are a lot of authors mentioned who make the whole text a bit difficult to read. It has been written in dialogues and threw the whole play there are only Rita and Frank talking to each other. We can recommend the book.

(two students) Aarau, Switzerland

The play "Educating Rita" is quite a good one. It's interesting to follow Rita's change and her new experiences educated by Frank.

At the beginning Rita doubt herself and is absolutely not satisfied with her life. Till she meets Frank.She becomes more and more independent and self-confident. And so she finally leaves her husband and starts her life new. At the end she also leaves Frank because she doesn't need him any longer. Frank is lonely now; he has lost a good friend and his job too, because of his alcool- problem.

She has changed her life, but she isn't happier with her new life, because she can't go back and she doesn't arrive to manage her new life.

( two Swiss students