It’s 1980, and Susan ‘Rita’ White has decided it’s time for a change.
A wise-cracking, no-nonsense hairdresser from the working-class streets of Belfast, Rita is tired of her job, her prospects, her husband, her life. She wants to be the sort of woman who knows the difference between Shaw’s Bridge and George Bernard Shaw, and so enrolls in an Open University course in English Literature where she meets her tutor Frank – a lecturer from North Down who teaches at Queen’s – and begins her journey of self-discovery.
Frank has his problems too. Divorced, an alcoholic, and sick to the back teeth of the pretensions of academic life, Frank finds Rita’s enthusiasm for learning and down-to-earth attitude refreshing. Frank and Rita make an unlikely pair, but could they really show each other a way to a better future?
Willy Russell’s award-winning comedy, Educating Rita comes to the Lyric in this reimagined new production starring the superb Kerri Quinn (Cabaret, Shibboleth) as Rita and Michael James Ford (How Many Miles To Babylon, Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie) as Frank and directed by critically-acclaimed Emma Jordan (God of Carnage, Scorch).
DIRECTED BY EMMA JORDAN
CAST – MICHAEL JAMES FORD & KERRI QUINN
