Educating Rita – Liverpool Playhouse – 06/02/2015

Because we could sing better songs than those…

Educating Rita may not have been born on the Liverpool stage but it always feels as though it has its spiritual home here, and Gemma Bodinetz justifies her qualifications as an honorary Liverpudlian in reviving it at the Playhouse in its 35th birthday year. The bittersweet tale of a hairdresser, whose search for self-improvement brings her to a teacher who likes her just the way she is, remains a timeless piece of wistful comedy.

In casting the iconic character of “Rita” the Playhouse have scored a hit here with the welcome return of Leanne Best, who has already long won over Liverpool audiences in a broad range of roles and who set the stage alight with her incendiary performance in The Matchbox. She inhabits the part of Rita as though the lines were written for her and delivers it with an irrepressible energy. From the moment she bursts through the door of Frank’s study we know we have a classic Rita.

To balance Rita’s hunger for enlightenment we need something approaching apathy in Frank, and it must be tricky to find an actor who can convey his lugubrious disinterest while having sufficient wit and shabby charm to make us like him. Con O’Neill who, like the play, has a spiritual home in Liverpool, is another great choice. There’s something in the quality of his voice that sounds world weary to begin with, and he succeeds in bringing out the shambling aspect of the alcoholic academic with alarming aplomb. Like Rita, we need to get frustrated with Frank but still like him enough to want to keep coming back. O’Neill makes us feel that here is a man who really doesn’t like himself very much but remains stubbornly conceited.

Gemma Bodinetz in her programme note agrees with Willy Russell that if a play needs explaining it’s probably not doing its job. The writing, which has been fine-tuned by the author to ensure its clarity to a modern audience, delivers its message with refreshing directness and it would suffocate with over-working. The only suffocating going on in this production is that caused by the lack of fresh air in Frank’s study, and the performances feel organic and natural. The pivotal scene in which Rita explains why she couldn’t make the party seems like a real revelation to both characters.

We do like our circular reading rooms in Liverpool. Not content with them in our libraries we put them in our theatres too. Ellen Cairns gave us a Victorian panelled affair for Glen Walford’s 2002 Playhouse “Rita”, with a big window dominating the rear of the set. For this new production Conor Murphy has designed a timeless, stylised version of a study; an arc of bookcases with exaggerated perspective and concealed doors. The window (necessary for the narrative) is invisible until Mark Doubleday’s lighting creates it through the fourth wall, putting us in the grounds outside, looking in.

Projections onto the sloped ceiling not only create additional detail but also carry us through the scene transitions, while Peter Coyte’s music perfectly defines the passage of time between scenes, with hours and sometimes weeks going by in a matter of moments.

Educating Rita has come back home and runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 7th March.

Leanne Best & Con O'Neill - image (c) Stephen Vaughan