Anthea Thompson
After her great success last year with Shirley Valentine, Anthea Thompson returns to the recently reopened (thank goodness) Kalk Bay Theatre with another hit play by Willy Russell. Even though the film of Educating Rita came out way back in 1983, many lines are as unforgettable as they are still entertaining.
Also remarkable is how when the adult student Rita, a Liverpudlian hairdresser whose real name is Susan, bent on self-improvement, describes the appalling conditions of her government schooling with its violence and apathetic teachers (a speech omitted from the film), she could be describing many of our neglected and vandalised local schools today.
In this modern day Pygmalion, the teacher is unwilling. Professor Frank Bryant is a washed-up alcoholic, failed poet and professional cynic. The play, scathingly critical of academia, is sympathetic to his reasons. Yet Frank meets his match in Rita, a determined optimist, craving everything she imagines he ought to be and the life she fantasizes he leads.
Filled with irony, this gentle satire on literacy, on the class system, on the tutor of life as opposed to the pedagogy of art, entertains at every delicious twist.
Anthea Thompson (Rita) is as impressive and David Dennis (Frank) as reliable as always.
