Cite des Arts will have an auspicious start to its 2009 season with the production of Educating Rita by British playwright Willy Russell. Curtain time is 7:30 pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, running from March 5th through March 21. Tickets can be reserved by calling Cite (109 Vine Street) at 291-1122.
Director Maureen Brennan didn’t have to search too deeply in her Rolodex to come up with a perfect cast for the two character play. Briefly, Susan White (“Rita”) a young working class hairdresser from Liverpool--a“Liverpudlian” to our cultured readers–-takes a literature course from Dr. Frank Bryant, a middle-aged university lecturer. Her motivation is to become “educated” by passing an exam that will prove her class status. We follow them through a semester of course work leading to her metamorphosis.
I started thinking "Pygmalion" and there was Vincent Barras (Bryant), a gentler “Henry Higgins” with a stash of scotch hidden around his office, and Erin Segura (Rita), an “Eliza Doolittle” with a mouth. Of course, you all remember Vince in “My Fair Lady” and Erin in a slew of uproarious British comedies.
Erin as Rita has some of the more memorable lines. In a “critical essay”, probably three lines long, Harold Robbins and Somerset Maugham appear in the same sentence. A critique of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt avers that “It would be better on the radio”.
Anyway, reserve a seat, enjoy the play and know that playwright Russell was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company!
---Robert D. Sidman, Ph.D.
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