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EDUCATING RITA
ONSTAGE Theatre Company's first show
in association with The Subterranean Theatre Company
directed by Ken Webster
Review from The Austin Chronicle
August 9, 1996
Two lives in counterpoint: one lower class, one upper; one female, one male; one with more than half of life ahead, one with less; one rising, one falling. Bring together two such different lives, and you have the stuff of drama. The contrasts of experience, of perspective, of desires, creates a tension between the characters, one that draws them closer, like two planets caught in each other's gravitational pull. They may end up in harmonious orbit around each other or collide and explode, and any encounter -- even the trivial -- may determine which it is. The audience gets sucked into that tension and strains to see which it will be. That may explain in part the durability of this 1980 comedy by Willy Russell. Like Bernard Shaw before him, Russell has recognized the inherent drama of an aging academic male tutoring a younger working class female and has exploited it with suspense and humor. Also like Shaw, Russell has created a couple of vivid characters for this orbital tango: spirited, blunt Rita, who's willing to chuck both her job as a hairdresser and her husband to better herself through higher education; and arch, cynical Frank, who's given up poetry and pretty much everything else for the blurry comfort of a bottle. They are the kind of characters that live through a force of personality that attracts and holds our attention. As such, Educating Rita is a dream for actors. They can play up those bold character traits for all sorts of theatrical fireworks: showy moments of hilarity, charm, tears. Of course, not all actors go for such performance pyrotechnics, as this effort from ON-STAGE, in association with the Subterranean Theatre Company, proves. Bernadette Nason and Michael Stuart embody these figures in a subdued way, a nuanced one,
pulling us in to their characters with small gestures rather than big dramatic strokes. It isn't that they or director Ken Webster are insensitive to the play's theatrical qualities; they just handle them with a light touch. The actors still nail the numerous laughs, but they do it by sailing them to us on a breeze instead of blasting them at us in a gale. They play the serious scenes with restraint and reveal the darker sides of their characters in glimpses. Nason never plays to Rita's quirky side or works to make us like her; her appeal is natural -- good-natured and gregarious, if a bit chatty. Mostly, she keeps the desperation in Rita well-hidden, but she occasionally lets it surface in a ragged edge in her voice that pulls us up short. Likewise, Stuart keeps Frank guarded for the most part, safe behind a jaded prof's tweedy cynicism. But then he'll glance at his whiskey-filled mug and confess his faults, and the shame fairly drips from his words. In this cast's hands, the play is less a showpiece and more the story of two lives coming together in a dingy room. It's a staging that would work even better in a smaller house on a thrust stage, but even in the spacious State, we feel the simple drama and tension of two lives in counterpoint. (Robert Faires) Through Aug 17, Thu-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 6pm, at the State Theatre, 719 Congress. $10. Running time: 2 hrs. 499-TIXS.
