How Does the Author Gain and Hold the Audience’s Interest in the Opening of the Play?
In the opening of educating Rita, the author quickly introduces 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.
Frank is introduced firstly as he is searching through a bookcase, muttering to himself as if looking for a book. He finds the book he is looking for and pulls out a hidden bottle of whisky from behind it and pours himself a drink. This tells us that Frank has a drinking problem. The author uses 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 as 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”. This shows an insight to frank as a person. He has a dysfunctional relationship with his wife and drinks a lot. He has had to take on a student at the Open University to help pay for his drinking. Even though he hasn’t met his new student he describes her as a “Silly woman’s attempts to get into the mind of henry James”.