James) The Winslow Boy (Old Vic/Roundabout) Passion Play (Duke of York’s) Macbeth (National Theatre of Scotland) Street Scene (Chatelet, Paris and Liceu, Barcelona) A Chorus of Disapproval (Pinter) Noises Off (Old Vic/Novello) No Quarter (Royal Court) Glasgow Girls (NTS/Stratford East) The Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Other recent work includes: Soul (Northampton/Hackney Empire) Reasons To Be Happy (Hampstead) The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary (Liverpool Everyman) Dancing at Lughnasa, Pentecost, Punk Rock (Lyric Belfast) Volpone (RSC) Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, The Rehearsal and Way Upstream (Chichester) Hay Fever (Duke of York’s) Closer (Donmar) The Wasp and Tiger Country (Hampstead) Juno and The Paycock, Educating Rita (Liverpool Playhouse) Kafka’s Dick (Theatre Royal Bath) Hope Place, Twelfth Night (Liverpool Everyman) Daytona (Haymarket) Relative Values (Pinter Theatre) Another Country (Trafalgar Studios) King Lear (Chichester/BAM) In The Next Room (Ustinov/ St. Previous work at the Rose: The Wars of the Roses. Until 25 July at Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex: 01243-781312, has sound designed over 250 productions throughout the UK and US. But it was a night – and a knight – made unforgettable for being the stuff of nightmares. She finally finds her equilibrium in elegant trousers, a long coat and a classy short cut. Frank Bryant Is a disillusioned university professor of literature. She wants to discover herself -son she joins the Open University. Rita, a hairdresser with a sharp wit, is married to Denny, and at 26 doesnt want a baby. She swaps garish ensembles with high heels for studenty dungarees and trainers, a froth of tight curls for groovy braids. Educating Rita (Play) archive listings and production details. Sometimes students end up being the best teachers. Michael Buffong’s production has the good idea of giving Rita almost as many wig and costume changes as Kristin Scott Thomas’s HM the Queen in The Audience as Rita experiments with various new identities. Nevertheless, Lynch’s Rita shone brightly, all but eclipsing Henry’s Frank as he descends into drink, disillusion and self-loathing as his protégée gradually slips from his grasp. But while I have huge admiration for Henry for getting through the performance, losing myself in the drama was, that night, impossible. An actor’s job is to remember the words, be in the right place at the right time, a feat of memory I shall always be in awe of. The miracle is that it happens so rarely. When an actor steps out of character, the spell is broken, and one’s confidence is lost. His recovery, however, was better than mine. T01348792535 Educating Rita is the unforgettable story of the relationship between a feisty Liverpudlian hairdresser and a jaded university professor. In fact, I had been anxious from the get-go, because Henry himself seemed uncertain, not fully inhabiting the part of the shambolic Frank as he padded around his study, not just searching for whisky bottles hidden behind Ibsen and Eliot, but also reaching for his words.Ī few minutes later, he returned to the stage, word-perfect, but sagging as surely as Frank’s woolly cardies. Chichester: County: West Sussex: From: 18th June 2015: Opened: 23rd June 2015: To: 25th July 2015: When: 19:45. Actually, I had already stopped breathing when he said subjective for what felt like the tenth time. Do you mind if I leave for just a second?’ Lynch’s Rita prattled on, without batting a heavily made-up eyelid. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool Educating Rita by Willy Russell Designed by Conor Murphy. For, poor old Lenny Henry – Sir Lenny now – who is playing Frank, Rita’s Open University tutor, got into a wretched tangle about whether literary criticism should be objective or subjective. Chichester Festival Theatre The Long Song by Suhayla El-Bushra. There are, of course, differences, but strikingly both Eliza and Rita outstrip their mentors in terms of emotional intelligence.Īt the opening night of the current revival of Educating Rita in Chichester, Lashana Lynch’s gobby Scouser ’urdresser Rita proved her credentials earlier than the plot demands. Like Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Willy Russell’s Educating Rita is about a working-class woman bettering herself with the encouragement of an older man.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |