[NEohioPAL] Preview of "Educating Rita" at Rabbit Run Theater

[Bob Abelman]

Rabbit Run looks to put on lovely 'Rita'

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This preview appeared in the News-Herald 8/14/09

The price tag on an Oberlin College liberal arts education next year will top $50,000, something of a milestone in the cost of higher education. 

In fact, tuition at many local schools, including Kent State, Youngstown State, Wright State and Case Western Reserve universities have risen for this coming semester.  

To help overcome a big budget deficit, state lawmakers recently reduced funding for Ohio College Opportunity Grants and terminated a state-wide internship program that put college students to work at local businesses.  

It would come as no surprise if the advertising in the current playbill at Rabbit Run Theater was dominated by public and private colleges and universities instead of local restaurants and orthodontists.  The colleges and universities could use the positive exposure.

Opening this evening at the pastoral Madison Township playhouse is Willy Russell's intelligent comedy Educating Rita, which pays homage to education and its ability to transform lives and save souls.  Forget about advertising.  The production should be underwritten by the Ohio Board of Regents.

 

Rita is a young hairdresser with an ignorant, lower-class husband, a self-perception laden with worthlessness, and an insatiable curiosity about poetry and literature.  Desperately seeking to alter her existence by improving her mind, she walks into the college office of a pompous, aging, creatively bankrupt literature professor.  He has an addiction to alcohol and a desperate need to be rescued from his own remorse and self-destruction.

 

OK, maybe this shouldn't be underwritten by the Ohio Board of Regents.

 

"This show is about choices and change," observes director Ann Hedger.  "It's about overcoming the fear of making a choice and embracing the consequences of the changes that are made."

 

The concept of a flawed but privileged man taking an underprivileged woman under his tutorage and instigating change is not new.  As Frank, the college professor in Educating Rita would no doubt know, his play is based on a story in ancient Greek poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with an ivory statue he has made.  He gives her life and they marry.  This, in turn, served as inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which begat the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady, which begat the film Pretty Women and many other related tales.

Willy Russell's work is a fine adaptation, notes Hedger.  "It is a play of words and it is brilliantly written, full of wonderful language of the common folk and the educated folk in England."

In fact, the playwright has said that he wanted to make a play that engaged and was relevant to those who considered themselves uneducated, those whose daily language is not the language of the university, or the theatre.

In this Rabbit Run production of this two-character play, Nancy Shimonek Brooks is Rita and Tom Milligan is Frank.  "Nancy brings an energy that fleshes out Rita's freshness and hunger for knowledge, and Tom has been working diligently to find every nuance in his wonderful character.  I'm thrilled to work with both of these actors," says Hedger.

This play addresses complex themes but is simply written and accessible, void of all the allusion, allegory, and symbolism that fills the literature to which its characters make reference.

It does possess a bit of irony, however.  Rita is pursuing an education in English Literature.  In today's economy, this would be an education she could ill afford and, in the end, would land her a job as a hairdresser.

Details

 

What:     Educating Rita

When:   Today through August 29 (8 p.m., Thursdays to Sundays).

Where:  Rabbit Run Theater, 5648 W. Chapel Rd., Madison Township. 

Tickets: $15 to $17

Info:        440-428-7092 or www.rabbitrunonline.tix.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20090814/22b9dfc5/attachment-0003.htm>