Educating Rita- How Does Russell Make The Opening Dramatic and Entertaining?
For the opening of educating Rita, Russell needs to entertain and interest his audience, however, he also needs to quickly introduce his characters: Frank, a university teacher in his early fifties, bored with his life and Rita, a badly educated hairdresser with a thirst for knowledge.
Russell begins "Educating Rita" with Frank searching frantically in his bookcase, muttering the names of famous authors under his breath as he searches for what the audience imagines to be a book. However, to our surprise, Frank jubilantly pulls out a bottle of Whisky and pours himself a drink. This tells us that Frank, perhaps has a drinking problem. Russell then uses the interesting medium of a one sided telephone conversation between Frank and someone we expect to be his wife or girlfriend. This entertains the audience as they are wondering what the person on the other end of the line is saying. We become more accustomed to Frank's character. The telephone conversation is also humorous : "Darling, you could incinerate ratatouille and still it wouldn't burn" and " What do you mean am I determined to go to pub? I don't need determination to get me into a pub".
