“A LOVELY part to play,” is how Michael James Ford describes Frank, the boozed up professor who takes a shine to Rita. “Frank is a very complicated character and it’s quite a journey. From the outset he is fast on track to becoming a disillusioned alcoholic, a failed poet and a failed teacher. He has deeply fallen out of love with his job”.
‘Educating Rita’ by The Lyric Theatre, Belfast tours to Limerick’s Belltable for Wednesday March 15 Thursday 16, 8pm.
“Frank takes on the Open University course to pay for his whisky habit. Then Rita [Kerri Quin] walks in and he rediscovers his mojo. She’s not like him at all, from a completely different world, incredibly sparky, cheeky, a woman who wants to change her life. Rita is looking to find herself in art, in literature, she wants to discover what ‘good taste’ is and talk about plays to see and films, food to eat.
“Frank rediscovers through Rita’s enthusiasm his love for literature. He becomes interested in writing in poetry again. He is reignited as a poet”.
This actor acknowledges the sexual undercurrent between the two principals, each of them in a long running relationship.
“Then Rita moves on from being this glorious, untouched innocent, becoming more sophisticated. And he resents that. He wants to freeze that moment in which they were. By successfully teaching her and interesting her in literature, criticism, poetry….” the dynamic of their relationship turns. It’s not good news for Frank.
Michael James Ford has serious admiration for actor Kerri Quin and for director Emma Jordan of Prime Cut, “a fantastic director, really amazing in her sense of where the emotional heart of the play is. She can mine the truth of the character, particularly in revisiting the play, digging further into the characters and their relationships”.
www.limetreetheatre.ie to book.
