Educating Rita

Educating Rita Essay

In this essay I am going to talk about act 1 scene 1 from the play Educating Rita which was written by novelist Willy Russell.

Willy Russell was born in 1947, Whiston, Liverpool. Willy comes from a working class background. And upon leaving school at the age of 15 with one O-level in English, he became a ladies hairdresser for 6 years and ran his own salon, Which he said helped him become a good listener. He then had numerous jobs, including writing songs that he preformed in local folk clubs, and preformed songs and sketches on local radio stations. When he was 20 he decided to return back to school and became a teacher in Toxteth. He then met his future wife Annie and became interested in writing drama. Some of his more famous plays include; Blood Brothers, Our Day Out and his first play, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert.

Russell is similar to the character Rita in many ways, Rita is a ladies hairdresser, who longs for a more fulfilling life and wishes to become educated in literature (as did Russell) they both also come from a middle class background, and are both faced with the same dilemmas in life.

In Act 1 Scene 1, Russell uses humour in the characters Rita and Frank, he does this by portraying a vast contrast between both characters. Rita is a common, mid 20 year old woman from a typical council estate in Liverpool, who wishing to pursue her dream of being more educated, changes her name from Susan White, to Rita, in admiration of the writer Rita Mae Brown in a sense that it may make her more sophisticated.

Where as Frank is a lecturer in a university in his early fifties, he is witty, intellectual but, he has lost passion for his job and is also an alcoholic. In the play it says he

“jubilantly he moves to the Dickens section and pulls out a pile of books to reveal a bottle of whisky.”

The contrast in these characters in itself is funny. There is an example of humour in the first few minutes of the play, where Rita attempts to open the door to Franks office, which leads you to believe that Rita is quite thick and unable to do the simplest of tasks like opening a door.

“that stupid bleedin’ door handle on the door. You wana get it fixed.”

This outburst from Rita takes Frank by surprise and in that moment, the roles of the two character are reversed as Rita appears to be the more strong minded of the two, and appears to be the one giving Frank an education. And Frank seems to be listening to what Rita has to say for herself. The beginning of the play is quite humorous because as a reader you wouldn’t expect to see this from these two characters. You also later find out that at the beginning of the play Frank doesn’t even know Rita’s name which is also meant to be quite humorous. Frank asks

“and you are?”

and Rita who is not used to being addressed in that way replies

“what am I?”

this Is funny because Rita assumes that Frank is insulting her as she does not understand the question, that he is asking, and this confusion continues for a few minutes until Frank decides to change the topic of conversation. Something else that is also funny is Rita’s brashness, and the way she expresses her feelings towards a painting in Franks office.

“look at those tits!”

This is funny because you wouldn’t expect a student in a lesson to swear so blatantly in front of their teacher, but because of Franks laid back attitude, and his loss of enthusiasm for his job and that fact that he swears quite a lot he doesn’t