Educating Rita, about a working-class Liverpool girl's hunger for education, is "simply a marvelous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending."—Sunday Times
"Like Roots and Pygmalion ... a touching play about the melancholic ways education often pulls people apart instead of bringing them together."—Guardian
"Mr. Russell has taken a look at two segments of English society and engineered a collision that is as full of regret as it is of promise ... the deft moments of its best comedy are splendidly refreshing."—The Times
Educating Rita premiered at the RSC Warehouse, London, in June 1980. Voted Best Comedy of 1980, it was subsequently made into a highly successful film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.