The Power of the Single Set in Educating Rita Essay -- Educating Rita

The Power of the Single Set in Educating Rita   Ã‚   There are obvious financial and logistical reasons for making Educating Rita a two-handed play, but Willy Russell does far more with this format than simply save money on actors and sets. 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. The depth and intensity of Rita and Frank's relationship is also highlighted by having them as the only characters on stage. 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.    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... ...ople in a room talking is not a problem. The talk is what is important and Willy Russell marks Rita's progress even in this. Her early statements are full of colloquialisms, swearwords and references to popular culture, but as the play progresses the way Frank and Rita speak gradually comes closer together (apart from the Trisha-inspired false start of Rita talking, as Frank says, like 'a Dalek').    Ultimately, Educating Rita is a comic play which examines some serious themes such as social class and the transforming effect of education on working class people, who choose to take it up. The monotony of only ever seeing one set and two actors is more than made up for by the quality of Russell's comic imagination and the importance of his themes in today's society.    Work Cited: Russell, Willy. Educating Rita Methuen Publishing, Ltd. 2001