Dundee Rep Theatre, May 28th, 2026.
In a week that saw a bitter row erupt within the BBC regarding men taking on women’s stories (four hundred female writers signed an open letter against Jeff Pope doing a dramatisation of Sarah Everard’s murder) questions still remain about the authorship of female experience.
But there’s no such concern with the evergreen ‘Educating Rita’, Willy Russell’s perennial classic play which takes on meritocracy; female empowerment and male disenchantment, all delivered with richness, complexity and heart. It’s never a battle of the sexes mess, even when it briefly scratches at these issues. Russell’s brilliant script just gets people, in all their multifaceted glory.
Debbie Hannan’s direction gives the two -hander real vivacity and pace. Grace Galloway as the titular Rita is more than facsimile of Julie Walters. She’s gobby, vulnerable and passionate, a glamorous, witty and outspoken young woman whose trajectory you can believe in, on and off university campus. Meanwhile, Richard Conlon as Frank, her Open University tutor, is lovably, twinkly, dissolute, without descending into clichéd pervy professor, tender but wise. He takes solace in the pile of books seemingly vomited into every corner of his chaotic study, and the bottles hidden behind them. It’s never claustrophobic , even though the action never leaves his study.
The set, inventively designed by Jen McGinley and lit by Michaela Fee, lights up cracks in the woodwork between scenes: either a visual metaphor for two lives heading in two different directions, or the fissures in the duo’s respective relationships at home-both are on the brink of divorce.
Together, the unlikely pair are flawless, like an eighties duet, finding in each other’s slightly caustic camaraderie, “a different song to sing”, as Rita puts it.
Photos by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan. At Dundee Rep until Saturday, 13th June.
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