Educating Rita: From Liverpool's Past to Trafalgar's Present, Still Short of the Mark

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, there was a University Drama Society, based at Liverpool University.

And one day, many, many years ago, that University Drama Society, without a hint of irony, decided to put on a play: that play was Educating Rita. A scouse play. A Liverpudlian play.

The (non-Liverpudlian) students involved worked very, very hard, but it has to be said, there was little new or interesting about the show. It was staged in quite an interesting room; the actors involved had to work very, very hard to get all their lines learnt, but when it came to the crunch, the show was distinctly average.

The End.

Incredible really, that, to my mind, there were about 100 layers of meaning, subtlety, nuance and so on that we missed. Plodding slightly thoughtlessly through in our 90s grey-scale nike trainers, I guess. But then I sometimes think, that's students for you.

The show's currently running in London. I went along with my sister. Despite similarly fantastic hard-working actors and another interesting venue (the Trafalgar Studios), once again, I felt it was an average production. (Happily, she loved it.)

I was struggling with my review for londonist one morning, when it suddenly turned into a political piece about funding. Very unlike me.

It's a shame, because I think Willy Russell is a fantastic writer. There's just something a little bit twee, a little bit stuck-in-a-time-warp, a little bit workin'-cla'ss-heroww (as EW might say) about his work. I almost wish someone would ask him to script a story that they're in charge of, and he might do better.

For delicious one liners, he's up there with Mr Stoppard. For universality of theme, timelessness of emotion, I don't think he even gets close.

King Lear and Liverpool

So, last time I lamented a missed opportunity from Rupert Goold and his King Lear which was part of Liverpool08, the capital of culture year.

I really strugged to capture everything I saw and how I felt about it with my review of the play. Despite the amazing acting, it was a bit of a mess, all in all. (And as I sometimes think happens, the messy play comes out as a messy review.)

I can't help thinking that a Lear for Liverpool, which took in something from the history and culture of that city, would've been much more interesting, more suitable than the mismatched muddle I saw at the Young Vic.

There's this from the Independent:

Goold's interpretation, we were promised, would "capture the spirit and atmosphere of an extraordinary city"

But also this:

Goold: "Lear is more resistant to the conceptual buggering around that I normally do."

Fair enough. But couldn't we have had something of the city? I mean, Liverpool does provide a pretty rich seam of history, culture, politics and more to mine for "conceptual buggery," doesn't it?

We could have had a Lear about football (much more serious than life or death!), a team divided into three, awful, uninterested daughters taking over the finances of a club; a Lear about business, trade, shipping, slavery; a Lear where the docks stand for the non-existent heath... It could've been about a scouse patriarch in clubland, if you want to make it really modern, the sons-in-law determined to fight for their piece of a club and drug culture, ready to extend petty gangster injuries on those in opposition to them.

I don't know. Perhaps all that sounds too preposterous. I just wish it didn't feel like Goold really wasted an opportunity; and totally failed to get to know the city, the culture, the history and the people the play was, basically, performed for in 2008.