'Educating Rita' At Mill Theatre, Thurso - 23rd - 25th August 2007

16th August 2007

Thurso Players take to the stage again later this month in what has been one of their busiest years for amateur productions.

The latest offering, 'Educating Rita', directed by Iain MacDonald, is a play for two characters and is set entirely in a lecturer's office at a Liverpool University. The plot centres around Susan White (Donna Swanson), a married woman in her twenties working as a hairdresser who signs up for a course at the Open University because she is eager to learn. Susan has changed her name to Rita because 'Rubyfruit Jungle', by Rita Mae Brown, is her favourite book. Her husband urges her to have a baby and strongly opposes her decision to go to university.

When the play opens Rita meets her tutor for the first time. Frank (Ken Murphy) is an unsuccessful middle-aged academic with a drinking problem who has no experience in teaching students but who has agreed to tutor OU students because he needs the money to fuel his out of control drinking habits. As time goes by, Frank gradually overcomes his initial repulsion to teach English literature to an utterly uneducated person. Eventually, his rising ambition to turn Rita into a respectable and educated member of society gets the better of him, and when he sees how quickly Rita learns he falls in love with his own creation.

You can see 'Educating Rita' at Thurso's Mill Theatre from Thursday 23rd to Saturday 25th August at 8.00pm each evening. Tickets are priced at £7.00 & £5.00 and bookings can be made by calling 01847-896956.