Educating Rita (Modern Classics) Paperback – July 23, 2009

So funny and touching. Great roles. Love this play.

Great read

I got the book and was surprised to see a hole in the front that went through the hard bound cover and a good portion of the book. While it doesn't obstruct any of the text, (and I found it somewhat humorous that there was a mysterious hole), that was not mentioned in the description of the product.

This cheerful little story is a modern day version of Shaw's 'Pygmalion'. Originally it was a play.Rita, a Liverpool lady in a working-class area, is determined to make something of herself and find out more about English literature. She enrols as a mature student and her tutor, a habitual drinker who's washed up, finds her refreshingly interesting compared to the usual kids in his lectures.Rita's husband isn't sold on this new fancy stuff, and wants her to start having babies like all the other women. The tutor enjoys awakening Rita's enquiring mind to all the world of poetry, plays and prose. His enjoyment is spoiled when he realises that Rita has grown past the lectures he gives and can find out more from summer schools and her own classmates. The story is not a complete romance but ends on a note of change.This was beautifully filmed in Dublin, with Trinity College and the rooms of the Literary and Historical Society featuring as well as night spots around the city.

Another thrift shop bargain that I picked up by chance. Like most people I've seen the movie with Michael Caine and Julie Walters but I wanted to see what they "play" version was like with only "Rita" and "Frank" seen at any given moment.It is actually quite enlightening, the discourse is perky and colourful and the other characters we verbally "meet" in the play are only one dimensional in the sense they are talked about but never seen by the audience. However this does not make them any less real and we soon start to believe in their existence even though we never get to see them in the flesh.This particular Longman book is quite good in that it gives a sturdy and interesting preface from Willy Russell himself, along with a fairly comprehensive glossary at the end and a reasonable study programme, rather basic if you are a graduate student but still useful for anyone who is a literature buff, be they beginner or expert.Not bad for a book that cost less than a dollar is all I can say!

As we watch Rita become educated, we are able to see the effects of education on both Frank and Rita. In a world that idolizes education as the ultimate means to improving quality of life and as a benchmark of success, the play is a challenging question about the true worth and effects of education, especially institutional education. I highly recommend this for anyone who's ever asked whether a graduate degree would truly be a good idea.

My main objection to this play is that it gives a totally false idea of the Open University. The characters in the play (acted in the film by the Michael Caine and Julie Walters) are a middle-aged man who is full-time university lecturer and a young woman hairdresser She is his only OU student, so she gets personal one-to-one tuition from him and they strike up a close personal friendship. The Open University actually has classes of twenty or more students and many of them never meet their "tutor" preferring postal or online communication. Students who enroll looking for a "personal tutor" are going to be very disappointed. Moreover, most of the teaching is not done by people who already have a proper university job. Why would they need to take on such very low-paid insecure work, paid at hourly rates, on short-term less than one year contracts? The tutors are almost entirely drawn from the army of overqualified unemployed women, working from home at the kitchen table, not in a nice luxurious college office. They have to provide all their own computers, equipment etc. Secondly most of the students are not working class. They are professionals doing it for career ambition or just out of interest as a hobby. Many are retired people but again, middle class. The OU churns out a leftie supposedly progressive ideology which is not very consistent with its reality as an exploitative employer. Willy Russell just knew nothing about the OU.

I'm exactly Willy Russell's age. I wonder how much of Willy he's invested in Frank, the male half of this 2 character play. There's more of me in him than I am comfortable exploring. That's unfortunate because I've been assigned the first scene of Educating Rita as an acting class exercise. It's quite a good play, really; better than 3 stars perhaps but not quite worthy of 4. It's a polemic from 1980 in which Russell unburdened himself of some of his views about the working class; that alone seems a little quaint from this side of the Pond and the Millenial divide. The fact is that Rita is a wonderful character, a true heroine. She is a classic Shavian philistine on her way to becoming a realist which as any student of Shaw knows is the highest form to which humans may aspire. I wish I was meant to play Rita. Unfortunately, Frank feels more like a foil than a character, at least after 2 readings of the play. Ben Kingsley said, after Nasty Beast, that you have to find something in even the most despicable character which you love in order to play him. Good luck. Frank is pathetic. He lives behind walls designed to protect him from having to live. The walls of academia, for one, the walls of the pub, for another. Finally there are the walls of books in his University office behind which he hides his whiskey bottles. So fifty-something Frank meets twenty-six year-old Rita. Although he is a catalyst in her great awakening, he fails to have one of his own. Unlike Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation, he lacks the insight and the decency to understand that this relationship, regardless of how much it does for him, simply cannot be. As a result the play seems to end on a very hollow, sour note. Or am I missing something?

Perfetto, letteralmente come nuovonon me lo aspettavo, consigliatissimo!

Aucun problème : correspond à la description et livré dans les délais

Un verdadero desastre! AlMes de pedido efectuado me comunican que no saben dónde está elPedido! Era un libro de texto para Bachillerato y me dejaron colgada!

Eine moderne Fassung des Lustspiels. Alles gut leserlich, bestens geeignet. Der Präambel vom Autor ist auch sehr aufschlussreich. Schrift sehr gut aber keine Vokabel.

I gave this product Five stars because I ordered it in conjunction with a copy of York Notes' A midsummer night's dream for my Literature course, I ordered them 7:30 on the Friday and received them the following day at 7:30.The product was brand-new and immaculate. I am particularly pleased with the questions at the beginning of each Act and scene. It's very useful for coursework.I was surprised when I found that the hardback was cheaper than the paperback, not that I'm complaining.All in all, I'm very pleased.