Willy Russell’s intellectually insatiable hairdresser is one of those rare comic creations who have become lodged in the collective consciousness. Yet the obvious question raised by this 35th-anniversary production is whether today’s Ritas can aspire to any kind of formal education at all.
To complete the Open University course she enrols in, Rita would now require in excess of £5,000, while her ambition of becoming a “proper student” at the end of it seems an economic pipedream. The original Rita, Julie Walters, commented in a recent interview that “people like me wouldn’t get a chance today”.
It is notable how quaintly conventional Rita’s notions of self-improvement turn out to be. When asked about her schooling, she spins a wistful reply about how she longed to attend an institution “with a matron, and a tuck shop, and boys called Jones major and minor”. Yet the key to Gemma Bodinetz’s astute revival seems to be what happens when people confuse education with erudition – Rita’s tutor Frank may have the allusions, the quotations and the command of a wine list; but he signally fails to come up with any answers.
Con O’Neill’s self-pitying lecturer seems increasingly aware of his failings as a poet, a teacher and a human being; padding round his book-lined lair like an increasingly indignant badger. Leanne Best’s Rita is evidently a woman whose time has come again, since the electric eyesore of her wardrobe could have been purchased from any current branch of American Apparel. Her ability to puncture academic pretension is as enjoyable as ever (“so assonance means getting the rhyme wrong?”). But as she sails off to embrace her brown-rice, stripped-pine future, you wonder if the enduring insight of Russell’s play is our willingness to exchange one restrictive set of stereotypes for another.
• Until 7 March. Box office: 0151-709 4776. Venue: Liverpool Playhouse.
