Educating Rita

Professor Frank Bryant discovers he has been assigned to tutor Rita, a thirties-something hair dresser who wants to escape her humdrum life by learning literary criticism. Bryant, a failed poet and middle-aged alcoholic trapped in a lifeless marriage, has lost his capacity to feel his own life. Rita enters his life like the first warm breeze of spring. She wants to learn her way to a fuller life. Inevitably, Rita and Frank clash. While she sees a way out of her unhappiness, Frank, in grumpy fashion, is resigned to his own shortcomings.

Frank knows that education is no guarantee of fulfillment or happiness. He fails, however, to discourage Rita. She wants a fuller life and will not be denied. As the two progress together through the tutoring sessions, their relationship grows, and Rita, in her quest, comes to realize that being enabled with more choices does not make it easier for her to find her way. The play tracks the growth of the relationship between Frank and Rita, resulting in many profoundly moving as well as hilarious moments.