'Educating Rita'
Educating Rita by Willy Russell. Directed by Richard Corley.
Finishing its summer season with a mini-Shaw festival the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn Theatre is the site for Willy Russell’s play "Educating Rita," a formulaic update of George Bernard Shaw’s "Pygmalion."
In the newer play Frank, a college professor and poet, tutors an uneducated hair dresser in an open university arrangement, helping her to better herself and become a woman he could love, only to have her throw him over for a student at the regular university, but then, just as Eliza Doolittle does in Shaw’s play, she comes back and gives him a trimming.
It is a sweet little play, one that has had a long life already, complete with a film version starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters. In Stockbridge, its cast consists of Jonathan Epstein and Tara Franklin. Both actors do well by their characters.
Franklin is an exuberant, exciting Rita. She bursts into rooms. She spouts her opinions. She towers over her teacher when it comes to personal news, emotional reactions and even to carousing. Franklin works well with her heavy Liverpudlian accent up top and her more discreet stage British lingo in the second act. Her hair, makeup and clothing, all provided by Sarah Reever, show her progress well. Franklin is an excellent Rita.
Epstein’s performance is totally different. While we can see his growing interest in his student, he never plays his emotions outright except in an occasional denunciation scene. His Frank is a man who lives in the bottle and the book and accepts nothing he hasn’t already offered. It is a quiet performance and it is a touching one.
These two characters do not easily mesh and, like Eliza and Higgins in the prototype, they never completely understand one another. They are just too different. Even as Franklin’s character gains poise and pride in herself as the new woman she has become, Epstein’s character has difficulty seeing anything other than the woman behind the lady. We can see it in his eyes and his body language. He reads the lines Russell has written sincerely, but his entire visual persona is housing his diffidence.
Contained within the elegant university rooms that Joseph Varga has designed, these two play out their story. There are no surprises here, no unexpected flies in any ointment. This tale of transformation is as old as the hills and as comfortable as the grass on those hills. Even so, that comfort value is what makes the evening acceptable.
Corley has been busy with his small cast and larger crew creating an atmospheric play where hundreds of props are brought in and taken out between the many scenes of this episodic play. More often than not those props are not touched, referred to or anything other than set dressing and half the time they are not even noticeable during the scene played among them. Loud music and a dim half light cover the changes and watching the choreography of those shifts in the scenery are fascinating. As Epstein rarely leaves the stage, he is a part of the visual display and that is more fun than it should be. Corley’s concentration may not have been on this aspect of the entertainment, but it is certainly one that the audience seemed to relish.
The BTF has mounted this play for a split run. It plays 10 days now and a longer period of time from September into October, an attraction in a major regional summer theater for the autumn leaf peeper crowd. This show is a good choice for such an offering, as it deals with changes, with an autumn/spring relationship, with school terms and with a deeper understanding of the human values that are important to us all.
Educating Rita is being played in the Unicorn Theatre at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge through August 31. It reopens on September 27 and plays through October 20. Tickets are $38-$43 and students with valid ID receive 50% off. For full schedules and tickets call the box office at 413-298-5576 or visit their Web site at www.berkshiretheatre.org.