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Educating Rita

Review

Both in outline and in detail, Caz Reeves gives an outstandingly honest, touching and enchanting portrayal of Rita. Defiant, bashful, cheeky, wide-eyed in clarity of perception.

You will not see many sharper amateur characterizations than this.

Rita is a frustratedly married, 26-year-old, Scouse hairdresser who decides she wants to learn everything, signs up for the Open University and is tutored by a man who takes refuge from his own frustrations in the bottle.

In the HumDrum AmDram production we see a woman who truly grows from gaucheness to assurance e- not just in appearance but in the way she stands and the look in those expressive eyes.

Director James George deserves credit for bringing out so precise and rounded a performance – and for linking Willy Russell’s scenes with aptly moody Beatles songs.

Frank, who gives Rita choice and thus independence but then becomes jealous as she begins to use it, is solidly played by Terry Moore.

But vocally he is too much on one level – where are the flashes of anger? – and there isn’t that crucial feeling of lines being spoken for the first time.

 

Mike Allen – Portsmouth News – Tuesday 9 May 2000