This is a wonderful play and a compelling production by StageGraft, the resident theatre company of the Old Fire Station.

Rita (Anjella Mackintosh), a working class Liverpudlian hairdresser, decides to get herself an education and enrols on an Open University English Literature course. She enters the study and the world of Frank (Robert Booth), an alcoholic, disillusioned professor and poet. Rita is on a quest for knowledge and culture. Frank is on a quest for love and unpretentious human companionship. Rita announces she wants to see and understand, learn about herself, discover meaning and talk about what matters. Frank is loath to teach her - the conventional game of learning and criticism has left him a lifeless, lonely academic and an alcoholic geriatric hippy. Literature - his life, has also ruined it. His wife left him in the absurd belief that it would further his poetry. The comedy lies in the clash of assumptions and social class. Beneath the surface, the substance of the play is a darker examination of all that is wrong with education and - indivisibly - our society, and also, in what is essential and important about learning and culture.

The play is a searing assault on our rigid class distinctions, and culture of ignorance and misunderstanding, aggravated by inequalities in wealth and education. Rita is soon alienated from her social milieu and her partner, who burns her books and leaves her because she refuses to come off the pill. Why didn't she go to college, Frank asks. 'What, from my school!', she jibes. At one stage she tries to alter her speech and it is uncomfortably believable that Rita will only be able to talk authoritatively if she trades in her Liverpudlian drawl for a dictum of received pronunciation. Frank cannot stand this. He feels education is a hoax, and is spoiling Rita's innate interest and vitality. But Rita, and finally the play, are entirely dismissive of this patronising, self-indulgent view that the working classes are happy with the status quo, and better off with their lot. As Rita points out, the unions may tell them to demand more money, but the ads on ITV just spend it for them - hardly a comfort or answer to some of the more difficult questions. Their raucous drunken behaviour is no measure of quality of life, but veils a deeper dissatisfaction. How dare the establishment want to keep the natives thick, she challenges? For Rita, the only thing that keeps her going is her reading and her weekly tutorial with Frank. If he can't reconcile life and literature that's his problem. Frank may decide to flee everything for Australia, but Rita will continue to negotiate her changed life, which though undeniably difficult, is at least controlled and driven by her, and her choices.

The two actors achieve sustained hilarity and moments of touching emotion. One message of the play may be that there is a lot wrong with education. But their performance asserts that there is little to be cynical about the power of literature and drama itself. Rita is bowled over by her first Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, and her engagement in her study is refreshing and real. 'Why on earth would you want to bother giving up an evening in a pub to watch amateur dramatics?', Frank asks Rita. You find yourself answering for her - to watch exactly this kind of play.

Stephanie Kitchen, 26.03.02