'Educating Rita' Raises Serious Issues
'Educating Rita' was voted best comedy of the year when performed by
the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980 and by 1983 it had risen to be
the fourth most popular play on the British stage. Russell uses humour
as a tool to engage and entertain his audience whilst at the same time
dealing with serious topics. Without the humour, the play would be
less accessible and would probably have reached a much more limited
and elitist audience.
The play is naturalistic with a fixed and simple staging, which firmly
reflects the real world. The entire play is set in one study room in a
red brick university. The room is Frank's environment - cluttered with
books representing both the world of knowledge and the disordered
state of Frank's mind and life. It is a far cry from the world to
which Rita is used, but one to which she aspires in her quest to 'find
herself'. By contrast Frank is disillusioned with his life as an
academic and the audience quickly gathers the impression that Frank
would escape from his world if only he could.
This theme is handled hilariously from the opening of the play. Rita's
bungled attempt to enter the room, fumbling with the door handle and
cursing, is a metaphor for the apparent barriers between Rita's
working class environment and the middle class, educated world that
she is trying to break into. "The poor sod on the other side on the
outside won't be able to get in. An' you won't be able to get out"
(Act one, scene one)
The mismatch between Rita's language and academic setting provides a
great source of humour throughout the play. Rita's accent and dialect
clearly sets her apart and so does the constant swearing and joking.
At times however...
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...ntually have to come to terms with
their mediocrity.
Although the play is hilarious the seriousness is never lost. The
humour is mainly at a verbal level and slapstick situation comedy is
avoided. The humour helps the author to bring out an essentially
optimistic flavour despite all the tragedy. Rita completes her
transition and ends the play as a well-rounded individual feeling
herself to be in full control of her destiny. She has learned a key
lesson on the way that she does not have to change her personality and
be like other people to become more mature. As Rita rises, Frank falls
as the drama unfolds. The play ends with his carrer at its lowest
point after students complain about his drunkenness. However, even for
Frank there is the hope of a new start and renewal with his sabbatical
to Australia a country which for him symbolises new beginnings.
Rita Crundwell was the trusted comptroller and treasurer of Dixon, Illinois with a passion for horses. She took advantage of her trust and responsibility to commit the largest known municipal fraud in the history of the United States. This fraudster has surprised and astounded people around the world by the amount of the fraud and for how long it went. Rita served the small town of Dixon from 1983 to 2012 until sentenced to nearly twenty years in federal prison for embezzling an astonishing $53.7 million. The story of this Dixon Commissioner shocked her small town and is studied by auditors all over.
Mark Lambeck uses the drama’s setting to relate Intervention to the audience. Specifically, he uses a vague yet understandable modern time. An audience can relate knowing they could experience the same thing on any given day. The location of the play is also a place an audience could easily find themselves. It is vague place that could represent almost anywhere, perhaps in where the audience is. In the current world, one could easily find themselves walking down the street on their cell phone. The characters are constant...
the play. It looks at the person he is and the person he becomes. It
The play is set in three scenes. The entire play is set in the dining
A Theme during the beginning of the play is the value and importance of dreams. Each person in that house has a goal that they want to reach but is delayed in t...
project of the play, of which is touched upon in Act One. It is this
The play is also a musical A example of this is in the opening scene
The play has an example of the technique of foreshadowing when Ruth faints. This foreshadows her later announcement of her pregnancy. The unchangeable setting is considered as a motif. Although the actions that affect the family happen outside. Yet the audience never goes out of the Youngers house. Mama goes out to buy a house, Walter goes to drink and Bennie goes for dates. All these actions are not shown, but the characters go out and come back to tell what they did. By keeping the actions in their apartment only, this reinforces the idea that the family is trapped in their small house and their life is not changing. Hansberry also uses the look of the apartment to convey the situation of the family that they are worn out of this life. Especially when Hansberry says that the furniture is placed to cover worn spots in the rug (loos40).
The theme of the play has to do with the way that life is an endless cycle. You're born, you have some happy times, you have some bad times, and then you die. As the years pass by, everything seems to change. But all in all there is little change. The sun always rises in the early morning, and sets in the evening. The seasons always rotate like they always have. The birds are always chirping. And there is always somebody that has life a little bit worse than your own.
of the play. I will also explore the role the common man plays in the
context of the piece and the society in which the characters are living in. Everything
When you first enter the theater, you are immediately in awe of the strongest aspect of this production: the set. The stage features a life-sized enchanted forest with “tress” as tall as the ceiling and a lit-up backdrop of a twilight sky. The tress would move around throughout the performance to make way for different scenes. In front of your very eyes, an enchanted forest would turn into the outside of a charming house with a lit porch and a well. The twilight sky would turn to a starlit sky and a soft spotlight simulating moonlight would compliment the faint sound of crickets. Suddenly the house and tress move around and you’re in a town with a little cart selling baguettes, or a lush dining room with Victorian wallpaper, a chandelier, and china displayed on the walls. The world shakes once again and now you’re in, inevitably, a ballroom. A white Victorian gate opens up to become the walls of the ballroom, and a white marble bridge and staircase appear for the outside of the castle. Adults and children alike were in awe of the craftsmanship and technology.
... goal was to become "such a help to John" (392). She has discovered the one place where she can have supreme control, and nothing will challenge her, apart from her own mind. But she has zero capability left to even interact normally with the outer physical world, and so it is although she isn’t even there.
Setting is a major part of the theme in a work of literature; however, the theme is also influenced by the characters , point of view, and plot. The time and physical location along with details of the setting are interconnected with the morals and attitudes of the characters throughout the piece. There can be many hidden ideas demonstrated throughout a work of literature from the setting. Trifles accomplishes this very effectively, displaying many underlying points from locations in the play and using many different props. While conveying the thoughts and emotions of the writer, the setting can also provide more information about the conflict of the work. The details of the setting of Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles provide clues for solving the murder of John Hossack.
The scripted gives every detail of what the house is to look like and states that the house should be more, “…comfortable than messy.” By having the set look like a comfortable home gives an atmosphere of what many, in the audience, would consider a homely feeling. (Norman, pg. 1) With guidance from Marsha Norman, the author of the play, she displays how she envisions the play being acted out and brought into the lives of the audience...