Educating Rita
Educating Rita Author: Willy Russell
First Performance: 1980, London
Published: 1981
Genre: Com. in 2 acts
Setting: Tutor's room in northern English university (Liverpool), 1970s
Cast: 1m, 1f
Frank, failed poet and unenthusiastic university lecturer in English, is earning some extra income by tutoring on an Open University (OU) course. His wife has left him, he is now living with a younger woman, and he cheers his desolate existence with copious amounts of alcohol. His first OU pupil is Rita White, a 26-year-old alert and voluble hairdresser, who has determined to improve her life by taking a degree. Slowly he teaches her formal education in which judgements have to be ‘purely objective’. Rita's husband becomes unhappy with her new enthusiasm, and when he discovers that she is on the pill, burns her books...
[The entire page is 325 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
eNotes Pass
