Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Educating Rita’, which is as Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold until Saturday April 6th.
I was wondering if ‘Educating Rita’ would have dated in the 33 years since Willy Russell wrote it. Academia, surely, has moved on and (hopefully) drunken tutors are more summarily dismissed these days. To me the writing so intuitively reflects the turn of the 80s, the simple trick of introducing mobiles and laptops can’t bring this play forward into the 21st century.
It’s only a niggle, but Theatre Clwyd might have been better advised to leave it in it’s own era. For it’s a landmark play, written at a time when thousands of individuals were educationally awakened by an army of Open University tutors, desperate for extra income.
To serve his account of this quiet revolution, Russell wrote two endearingly memorable characters; and it’s so good to meet them again after all these years.
Frank is a weary English Lit. lecturer who’s got to the point of knowing he knows nothing and is consequently well on the way to being all wash-up.
Into his cluttered, concrete college study bounces the bright and determined 26-year-old Rita. She recognises she knows nothing of culture (for her ‘Yates’ is a wine bar, not a poet) and is on a headless mission to learn. Both are unlucky in love and have more respect for each other than for themselves.
In Frank’s study, Rita is unintentionally coquettish. So he falls for his new student (as, we hear, he has before) whilst she starts to care about him; though neither actually gets round to lighting the blue touch paper of sexual chemistry. Instead, the play charts their ‘passing ships’ relationship; for once Rita’s thirst has drained Frank’s reservoir, she sails on.
Richard Elfyn plays Frank as a cuddly careworn English alcoholic, who conveniently keeps his Famous Grouse with his Dickens and wears his specs pushed back into his unkempt hair like an Alice band. It’s a wonderfully observed performance of a threadbare academic, kept barely alive by his love of literature.
He’s partnered by Katie Elin-Salt who is just scintillating on stage, playing the instantly captivating ‘common’ hairdresser with unbridled magnetism and a broad, decidedly unglamorous Welsh accent. Katie is yet another newfound gem for the Clwyd Theatr Cymru company, which strengthens every season.
They serve Russell’s themes of suppression followed by liberation, and the value of real (rather than academic) knowledge extraordinarily well with memorable moments of theatre.
When Rita excitedly sweeps in after seeing her first Shakespeare play, Elin-Salt’s towering enthusiasm took me straight back to my first ever night at the RSC. And director Emma Lucia halts the action for a daringly long time whilst Rita writes her essay.
Three decades on, Russell’s writing about the sense of self-awareness, self worth and self- improvement is as crisp, penetrating and amusing as ever. The plot still rambles, but it’s a classic of its time and well worth reviving.
Visit www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk for more bookings & information about Clwyd Theatr Cymru.