| Product: |
Educating Rita - Willy Russell |
| Date: |
28/06/01 (1245 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Incredible writing style
Disadvantages: Can be misjudged easily
Introduction
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Do you remember the days when you were at school? When you were being taught all those subjects in order to gain yourself a good grade to get a good job and become intelligent.
Perhaps the best way to empathise with this book is to have taken English Literature at A-level or maybes to have just done A-levels. One thing is for certain and that is this book deals greatly with the affects of growing intelligent. Where I found my most empathy with this book from was studying A-level English Literature.
Biography
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Willy Russell grew up just outside Liverpool where he attended school and failed. He was then destined to work at a ladies hairdresser. He went to college for a year to pretend to learn hairdressing but instead went to parties. At the end of it he had to go into hairdressing a job he couldn't even do right. Still before he managed to get a bad reputation at one hairdresser he moved on to another. Each time he longed for becoming a writer and wrote poems and songs during his breaks at the hairdresser's. Russell then decided he wanted to go back to College and take 'O' and 'A' Levels. However he needed to pay for this so he ended up working at a factory doing incredibly dangerous work for a big price. Finally Russell had the money to attend college and so at the age of twenty he did so.
About the Play
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Educating Rita is much reflected upon Russell own experiences during his education at college. However the character is obviously different to Russell seeing as it is a female and she is twenty-six years of age. Of course she still has Russell's "Liverpudlian" accent, his job at the hairdresser's and his determination to become educated.
Educating Rita is a story that involves a young lady named Rita whom seeks to be further educated to get a better job and have a better life. For this she must attend Open University wit
h a tutor called Frank. Frank is not your average professional teacher. He hates students with such a passion that he has resorted to alcoholism in order to teach them with out losing his mind. He finds students to be openly pretentious know it all's who believe they know exactly how to get into an author's head.
In the opening of the play Frank shows great resentment toward being talked into taking an Open University student. He believes that he will get another average pretentious student and he doesn't know if he can handle it. Of course when Rita walks in she shows a different attitude to what Frank expected and they seem to get along well.
Through the play Rita begins to get smarter and is hungered more for education and to become an intellectual. After reading more and more books Rita seems to be improving a lot more and becoming a lot smarter. Unfortunately after devouring a number of books, attending summer school and socialising with students Rita becomes what Frank hates, pretentious. At this point Rita begins giving analysis that may be intelligent but has no soul to it like she used to. She blindly analyses poetry and does not consider the inner passion and affects it has but only the allusions it makes and its roots.
In the end Rita seems to turn around again to what she used to be although she is a lot more intelligent then originally.
Willy Russell uses an interesting style throughout this play to emphasise what is going on. In order to show us that Rita is becoming more and more intelligent through the play he not only gives her more complex language to use but also gives her less Liverpudlian slang. On top of this Rita also begins to analyse day to day situations a lot more and shows deeper thought to life.
When Rita becomes what Frank despises, a pretentious student, Russell has Frank compare himself to Frankenstein and Rita his monster.
Verdict
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An incredibly thought out play and one t
hat can easily be misjudged and thought of as simple and lacking depth. The best way to tackle this play is to read it a couple of times through first. Do not be tempted by the movie, 'Educating Rita' because watching this first or when you don't appreciate the novel only makes you dislike it. It is always best to try and imagine your own characters in a play and in this one you are left with only two characters to really imagine.
I'll grant you that this is not exactly 'Shakespeare' material but it is incredibly good never the less and probably the best contemporary play I have ever read.
I would therefore recommend giving this play a good look at and try buying a book that has some information about the author so that you can appreciate what he has done a little more.
Summary:
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