Educating Rita - The play is essentially about the impact of education on thelives of two people and it therefore does not need to distract theaudience with Rita and Frank's other relationships and concerns.Having them as the only characters on stage also

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 The play is essentially about the impact of education on the lives of two people and it therefore does not need to distract the audience with Rita and Frank's other relationships and concerns. Having them as the only characters on stage also highlights the depth and intensity of Rita and Frank’s relationship. It could be argued that the single room set does not give the audience enough of a sense of the social context of the two characters, but this is more than made up for by the incidents that they narrate about their lives outside Frank's study.

The single set represents Frank's personality and position in the intellectual elite. From its description in the opening stage directions, it is a typical don's room; lined with books, strewn with papers and decorated with a 'good print of a nude religious scene'. But Frank's first actions on stage undermine the high intellectual impression created by the room. He is searching his bookshelves not for a book, for but a bottle, which he duly finds behind the highly respectable Dickens. When Rita eventually enters after her struggles with the door (symbolic perhaps of the obstacles placed on her road to enlightenment) she comments perceptively on the painting that, for all its value as art, is still just an excuse to look at a naked woman's body.

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In Scene 2 Rita admires the room's appearance in spite of the fact that it is a mess.

Rita: How d'y' make a room like this?
Frank: I didn't make it. I just moved in. The rest sort of happened
Rita: (Looking round) Yeh. That's cos you've got taste. I'm gonna have a room like this one day. There's nothing phoney about it. Everything is in its right place.

Clearly the room represents Rita's aspirations, her desire to become a member of the educated middle class elite. As with education itself, Frank has got it but doesn't value it, whereas Rita ...

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