About the work
Educating Rita is a two-hander comedy by Willy Russell. Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it premiered at the Warehouse Theatre in London in June 1980, starring Julie Walters and Mark Kingston, before transferring to the West End's Piccadilly Theatre in August 1980.
Plot
The hairdresser Rita, driven by a thirst for knowledge, enrols in an Open University correspondence course and is assigned to the disillusioned, whisky-loving literature tutor Frank. Over the course of their meetings Rita changes profoundly, while feeling increasingly torn between her old life and the new world of education.
Cultural significance
Julie Walters won the 1980 Olivier Award for Comedy Performance of the Year for her Rita; the play was filmed in 1983 with Walters and Michael Caine, earning Russell an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. In German-speaking countries several translated titles circulate, including "Bildung für Rita" and "Rita will's wissen", while English-language stages such as the English Theatre Hamburg keep the original title.