Class Struggle

EDUCATING RITA

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Monday 8^th July, 2019

 

Almost forty years after its first production, Willy Russell’s acerbic two-hander is doing the rounds again, and it’s a pleasure to reconnect with the story of hairdresser Rita as she pursues her academic aspirations in order to better herself and improve her lot.  The tutor assigned to her by the Open University is jaded lecturer and functioning alcoholic Frank, who overcomes his reluctance and forms a bond with his persistent and unconventional new student.

We laugh at Rita’s gaffes, as we meet her through Frank’s eyes – the play credits us with a modicum of literary knowledge – and we see, also through Frank’s eyes, how education changes the bright but awkward young woman into a confident, knowledgeable scholar.  Frank thinks he has created a monster, Frankenstein-style – but what Rita has done is break the mould of her working-class upbringing.  By aspiring to something other than material gain and a ‘good night out’ down the pub, Rita has changed her life.  She now has something she never had before: choices.

As Frank, Stephen Tompkinson does a flawless job, dripping with bitterness and sarcasm.  Jessica Johnson’s Rita has impeccable comic timing, although her accent can wander around the Mersey estuary (and sometimes across the Irish Sea).  There is nothing to say that Rita has to be from Russell’s hometown of Liverpool; she could spring from any working-class community.

The star of the show is Willy Russell, and it’s great to be reminded of the richness of his writing. There is much more to the play than the snappy jokes and the developing relationship and mutual respect between tutor and student.  There is social commentary about the rigidity of the class system and the perceived need to maintain the boundaries that define who people are.  Rita battles against the prevailing working-class attitude that art, books, the opera and so on are ‘not for us’, but once the genie is out of the bottle, she is unable to go back to pub singalongs and settling down with her lot.

Director Max Roberts navigates Rita’s mercurial mood changes: one minute she’s mouthing off, making wise cracks, and the next she’s revealing some home truth; Roberts keeps his cast of two busy.  Both characters are somewhat histrionic in their own way so there is no danger of things becoming static.  Patrick Connellan’s set, with books everywhere, encapsulates dishevelled academia (representing Frank himself) with Rita as an agent of change, for herself and for her unwilling tutor.  Neither of their lives will be quite the same again.

There are plenty of laughs, and even a couple of touching moments.  The message is not heavy-handed, but I wonder how relevant it is today.  And then I think of the obstacles placed in the path of working-class people that hinder their access to higher education, some of which come from the working-class mindset itself, and I think, yes, the play still has currency.

A modern classic, finely presented, this play will make you laugh and make you think.

Jessica Johnson and Stephen Tompkinson

Pitting Their Wits

THE PITMEN PAINTERS

Festival Theatre, Malvern, Monday 25^th March, 2013

 

Lee Hall’s play gets off to a conventional start with a group of men turning up for an adult education class on Art Appreciation.  They’re miners – apart from a Marxist dental engineer and a young lad who is unemployed – and their down-to-Earth plain-speaking and Geordie humour put their posh tutor in his place.   It’s familiar territory, bringing to mind Educating Rita (the tutor shows them a slide, “A Titian!” Bless you! – that kind of thing), The History Boys, and also Art by Yasmina Reza.  The characters – a comical bunch of contrasting types – have heated discussions about the nature and purpose of education and of art.  It’s all very amusing and the comic timing is impeccable.

It’s all based on truth, a real group of working class painters from Ashington who achieved success during the 1930s and 40s.  Their images are projected on screens and discussed.  The pretensions of the art world are pricked and punctured, and it’s all rather engaging and enjoyable.

But, in the second act, things really get going…

Philip Correia is excellent as naive (in more ways than one) painter Oliver Kilbourn, who blossoms under Mr Lyon’s tutelage.   This performance is the heart of the piece as Oliver struggles with an offer that seems too good to pass up, held back by notions of his humble origins and loyalty to his class.  Correia brings sensitivity and passion to the role; his growing confidence and ability to articulate his ideas, his regret, anger and frustration at an opportunity missed.  It’s entirely gripping to see and Correia is more than ably supported by Louis Hilyer as Lyon and Suzy Cooper as Lady Sutherland, Oliver’s would-be patron.

Riley Jones impresses as the young unemployed lad, on the fringes of the group.  He also doubles as famous artist Ben Nicholson in a dazzling display of his versatility.

Nicholas Lumley is funny as stickler-for-rules George although most of the out-and-out funny lines go to Donald McBride’s Jimmy. Joe Caffrey brings intensity and humour to his role as the Marx-spouting dental engineer, and Catherine Dryden gets them all in a tizzy when she turns up as a life-model.  Later we hear that she has abandoned her artistic pursuits – the all-too common story of opportunities forsaken.  It’s a tight ensemble but for me Philip Correia is the stand-out performance.

Most of the characters survive the War and here the play becomes starkly relevant to us today in 2013.  The post-war optimism of the working class in Britain has been obliterated by the likes of Thatcher and successive rotten governments (including “New” Labour).  The play ends with the men looking forward to a better life for everyone after the massive sacrifices of the war, to the brand new NHS, to better aspirations for all, to nationalisation and shared ownership of the means of production… And I just sat there feeling sick and disgusted at what we had in this country and what has been taken from us and sold off, and how the people of this country have been hoodwinked and betrayed.  An opportunity lost.

It’s a real kick in the teeth, perfectly delivered by director Max Roberts and Lee Hall’s script in a show that brims with warmth and humanity.