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EDUCATING RITA
Director: Maurice Dubras.
Jersey Arts Centre
17th March 2009 to 21st March 2009
Two of Willy Russell's best-known plays have female protagonists, Educating Rita, which was inspired by his own experience of returning to education, is about a young woman working class woman who decides to study English with the Open University. Much of the comedy arises from her fresh, unschooled reaction to the classics of English literature, but she is never patronised by the author, who recognises from his own experience that education is a means of escape from one's own circumstances. Shirley Valentine is also about escape, and takes the form of a monologue by a housewife before and after a transforming holiday in Greece. Both plays were made into very successful films from Willy Russell's own screenplays, featuring the actresses who originally created the roles on stage (Julie Walters and Pauline Collins each of whom won an Oscar nomination for their respective roles, as did Russell for his Educating Rita screenplay).
Source: www.willyrussell.com
Footnote: Maurice Dubras directed Shirley Valentine with Jacqui Audrain in the lead role in 1994.
