Educating Rita

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Description

Educating Rita, about a working-class Liverpool girl's hunger for education, is 'simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending.' Sunday Times

Educating Rita premiered at the RSC Warehouse, London, in June 1980. Voted Best Comedy of 1980, it was subsequently made into a highly successful film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.

Reviews

Russell plays don't date, any more than Jane Austen novels - Rita is a universal figure: any of us in a time of transition, increasingly uncomfortable in our old world but, as yet, unproven in the new. * Libby Purves, The Times, 28.07.10 *
Willy Russell is a dramatist of exceptional warmth and humanity. * Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 28.07.10 *
Russell, too easily dismissed as a slavish populist, here seems a cherishably perceptive observer of the vagaries of social class and sexual politics. * Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 28.07.10 *

Author Bio

Willy Russell, born in Whiston near Liverpool, is one of the mostpopular and successful contemporary playwrights whose works are studiedin schools and colleges. His plays include: One for the Road, Stags and Hens, Educating Rita, Blood Brothers and Shirley Valentine.