EDUCATING RITA. To 28 February.

Hornchurch

EDUCATING RITA
by Willy Russell

Queen's Theatre To 28 February 2004
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 28 Feb 2.30pm
Audio-described 28 Feb 2.30pm
BSL Signed 18 Feb
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS: 01708 443333
www.queens-theatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 February

Not the subtlest twosome, but eventually winning through on energy and clarity.Two things come to mind watching Matt Devitt's revival of these scenes in the relationship of a 26-year old hairdresser turning her lively, untutored mind to an Open University Literature course and the weary academic who finds himself teaching her apart from how slack academic life around 1980 seems. Both show Devitt's production, if not the most subtle, winning through by energy and conviction.

A link with Shaw's Pygmalion is emphasised by Emily Gardner's posh-talking scene, the loss of Liverpudlian accent when she sets out to sound like the uni's middle-class learners. Gardner has just the right slower pace and falseness of voice for an unnatural tone.

It's been said that, far from bringing a statue to life, Shaw's Henry Higgins reduces Eliza Doolittle's natural vivacity to a statuesque imitation of social sophistication. Rita breaks through this, regaining her own voice. It's no accident the play ends as she sits him away from his desk which dominates the centre in the oak-panelled, large-windowed traditional idea of an academic environment Rodney Ford's set provides asserting her own trade with a makeover hairdo.

The other parallel's been made several times in British theatre by playing Rita in rep with David Mamet's Oleanna, where a middle-aged male American lecturer's destroyed as an initially awestruck female student pursues him for crimes against her gender. Though the Mamet remains fiercer, Devitt leaves Rita not so far behind.

Rita's sweeter, but takes command as she adopts Frank's early pose, hands behind the head, sitting in his chair, telling him a thing or two about himself. About time too. James Earl Adair's drunken Frank (rolling drunk on the floor at one point) is aggressively self-pitying. His comments about Rita's lively energy come over mightily egotistical, his disillusion as self-indulgence.

And there's the vivacity of Gardner's imposing presentation. Lines could be more subtly handled by both Devitt's production needs more shading and, in early scenes, shaping of the relationship. But, changing from her eye-catchingly coloured, leg-baring wardrobe to a post-summer school, second-hand body-enclosing couture there's no doubt the performer stamps a physical and live-minded individuality on the role.

Frank: James Earl Adair
Rita: Emily Gardner

Director: Matt Devitt
Designer: Rodney Ford
Lighting: Matthew Eagland

2004-02-13 07:43:20