Educating Rita

This play by Willy Russell is a model of how to write a two-hander.  It's also a model of how to write a play that doesn't go out of date.  Directed by Jeremy Sams in a production that started life at the Menier Chocolate Factory, it's playing at the Trafalgar Studios to a new generation of theatregoers, many of whom weren't born when it was written nearly 30 years ago.  But it doesn't have the earnest feel of a revival from Thatcher's Britain, because the humour is based on character and the underlying issues about the ability of education to empower people's lives haven't gone away. Social mobility is probably more of a problem today than in 1982.  It's a good play to see in the week the A-level results came out.  Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters is probably a more profound play on the same themes of culture, education and class, but Russell's two-hander delivers more emotional impact by narrowing the focus to two characters --  Rita, the 26-year-old hairdresser with a sudden hunger for literature, and whisky-soaked lecturer Frank, her Open University tutor.  It's warm and human without being sentimental, and like Shirley Valentine, Russell's other corker, with which it alternates, it has a great role for an actress.  Laura Dos Santos, deploying her genuine Liverpudlian voice to terrific effect, seizes the opportunity and makes a convincing transformation from Rita Mark One to Rita Mark Two.  Frank, of course, remains as sozzled at the end of the play as at the beginning.  Tim Pigott-Smith isn't quite right for the role;  he's a lot less sozzled than Michael Caine was in the film version, and not edgy and dangerous enough.  Frank has to be played as a selfish bastard with a needy and possessive streak to inject tension into the play, and Pigott-Smith is too much of a born gentleman.  With that reservation, it's a show well worth seeing, and you won't have to pay top price for tickets.