What does Educating Rita gain and what does it lose from being a two-handed play?

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Amandeep Ghuman 11Red

Educating Rita

What does “Educating Rita” gain and what does it lose from being a two-handed play?

“Educating Rita”, is a two-handed play which only has two characters and one set. “Educating Rita” was written in 1985 by Willy Russell, it looks at how the relationship between two people, Rita and Frank, develops as the play goes on. “Educating Rita” is the story of Rita, a hairdresser who decides to go to University in order to discover who she really is. When she arrives at University she meets Frank, a lazy alcoholic who doesn’t really care about being a University lecturer. At first, Frank refuses to teach Rita but he soon finds he has a soft spot for Rita and decides to teach her everything he knows about English Literature. I will be analysing the advantages and disadvantages of “Educating Rita” being two-handed play. I will be referring to the play version and also to the film version of “Educating Rita” to analyse the different gains and losses of the two-handed play.

                            First of all, I will be looking at the many advantages of “Educating Rita” being a two-handed play. There are many benefits of having only two characters and only one setting in a play, for example a close relationship develops between the two main characters, as the depth and intensity of the relationship is much more highlighted than it would be if there were more than two characters in the play. This shows the importance of the two characters. For example, in Act One, scene five when Frank says “We really should talk about you and Denny, my dear”, this shows Frank and Rita’s relationship takes a bigger step because they both discuss each other’s personal problems, for the first time Frank isn’t just Rita’s teacher but he’s her confidant and really wants to talk about Rita’s personal life. Now that their relationship is much deeper, with just the two characters in the play, the audience can now focus on how their relationship can grow. That particular scene emphasised how their relationship was progressing and would not have been highlighted as much if there were more characters in the play. Another benefit of having a two-handed play is, as an audience we can concentrate particularly on just the two main characters, even though we are told of others. As a result, we aren’t distracted by insignificant characters or minor concerns, this would only confuse the audience about what is going on in the play. There are many characters that are mentioned in the play by Frank and Rita that we don’t hear any dialogue from. For example, we hear about Denny, Rita’s husband, about Julia, Frank’s partner, and about Trish, Rita’s flatmate, who attempts to kill herself. The financial and logistical implications are also a benefit for “Educating Rita” being a two-handed play because, as there is only one set used in the whole play, therefore, the play is cheaper to stage as they don’t have to pay for another set to be built or rented. Also more money is saved from the play’s budget as the director only has to pay the wages of two characters. More benefits of “Educating Rita” being a two-handed play are that minor characters or concerns in the play do not distract the audience, therefore they can focus all their attention on the two main characters and see how their relationship grows instead of being distracted by minor characters and insignificant concerns, which don’t really play much of a part in the play.

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       Another advantage of “Educating Rita” being a two-handed play is that having only one set means the set becomes very significant as the play progresses. For example, at the start of the text, in Act One, scene one, the set reflects Rita’s aspirations of being an intellectual, when she studies the picture of a nude religious picture that Frank has on one of his walls, she says “That’s a nice picture isn’t it?” and then she studies the picture. This shows Rita is making herself aware of the room that she is going to spend a lot ...

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