EDUCATING RITA

KDHX Theatre Review (Mark Bretz)

Plays with small casts put the stress and pressure of performance squarely on the shoulders of their handful of actors. There is no place to hide if the actor falters, no one else to stand behind in a moment of indecision.

Alpha Players' current production of Willy Russell's two-character work, Educating Rita, takes a big gamble by investing so much faith in just two actors in a community theater production. For the most part, however, it's a gamble well worth the risk, with handsome rewards for cast, crew and audience alike.

Russell's story explores the relationship between a disillusioned English professor, Frank, and a working-class young woman, Rita, whom he has agreed to tutor at a university in northern England. To Frank (Andrew Richards) it's just some extra work that will provide additional income for items of interest to his wife; for Rita (Michelle Hand) it's an opportunity to expand her horizons, which she views as considerably limited, by reading great books and learning deeper menaings from them.

Frank and Rita are reminiscent of another famous English mentor-student duo, Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, as Frank views Rita with the same degree of clinical indifference as Higgins looked at Eliza, as little more than a means to an end. Like Higgins, though, Frank finds himself charmed by Rita's undistilled innocence and honesty.

It's no secret that Educating Rita is as much about the values learned by Frank through his connection to Rita as it is about Rita's transfomation from a simple but sweet young lady somewhat scared of a greater society into a self-confident and self-fulfilled woman. But while Rita learns a great deal from Frank beyond William Blake and D.H. Lawrence, Frank is a poor student indeed. His desire to be a serious poet is overwhelmed by his capitulation to his alcohol of choice.

Educating Rita is a nice little slice-of-life effort, with no tidy answers other than showing the patron two ways to look at life, the oft-quoted half-empty or half-full. Michael Caine and Julie Walters brought Frank and Rita to the silver screen about 20 years ago, and their performances still resonate.

Even against that backdrop, however, Hand's performance is a sheer joy to appreciate throughout. She completely captures the essence and charm of Rita, showing us her vulnerabilities and fears as well as her determination. Richards' performance, while having a tendency to spill into exaggeration, is also well worth our attention, particularly when he struggles with his self-revulsion. Under Trevor Biship's studied direction both actors immerse themselves into their roles with considerable conviction.

The towering bookshelves on Justin Barisonek's set show us how intimidating the world of literature first appears to Rita, and Steven Dohrmann's tightly focused lighting puts both charactrers under the glare of society's approval. Colleen Heneghan's costumes show both Rita's transformation and Frank's self-imprisonment, complemented by the effective sound design of Pirronne Yousefzadeh.

Post-Dispatch Review (Gerry Kowarsky)

"Educating Rita" is an appealing, insightful script about a student and a teacher who help each other grow. The two-character play by Willy Russell has not been performed frequently by local community theaters, perhaps because it allows only two members of a group to appear on stage.

As the concluding entry in the Alpha Players' current season, however, the small cast of "Educating Rita" nicely balances the large one of the company's previous show, "The Women," which had 36 speaking parts played by 25 performers, all of them women.

The Alpha production of "Educating Rita" is a fine effort. All the action takes place in the book-lined office of Frank, an instructor at a university in the north of England. In the opening scene, Frank meets Susan White, a hairdresser half his age, who now calls herself Rita, after Rita Mae Brown, the author of "Rubyfruit Jungle."

Frank is to be Rita's tutor through the Open University, an innovative British educational institution that opened in 1971. It has flexible programs and admission policies designed to serve mature adults.

Rita and Frank are both dissatisfied with their lives but for different reasons. Rita squandered her first chance at learning by succumbing to peer pressure not to take school seriously. Now, she wants to discover herself through education before succumbing to pressure from her husband to start having babies.

Frank is a failed poet who drinks heavily to cope with disappointment and self-pity. Even though she sees Frank as a "geriatric hippie," Rita somehow connects with him and insists that he fulfill his commitment to her.

The Alpha cast is impressive. Andrew Richards looks younger than Frank, who is supposed to be in his early 50s, but Richards persuasively captures the disheveled look, prickly manner and underlying sadness of the disillusioned academic. Rita's determination is clear from the start in Michelle Hand's engaging performance, which admirably delineates Rita's personal growth in the course of her studies.

With its towering bookcases, Justin Barisonek's set design evocatively re-creates an academic environment with the help of properties selected by Amy Soll. Trevor Biship's direction finds a variety of ways to use the single set. Colleen Heneghan's costume designs are appropriate for the characters and situations, and Steven Dohrmann's lighting design punctuates the scenes effectively.