Educating Rita Lashana Lynch as Frank and Rita. Educating Rita Educating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. It is a play for two actors set entirely in the office of an Open University lecturer. Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, "Educating Rita" premièred at The Warehouse, London, in June 1980 starring Julie Walters and Mark Kingston. The play was directed by Mike Ockrent. The plays follows the relationship between a 26-year-old Liverpudlian working class hairdresser and Frank, a middle-aged university lecturer, during the course of a year. In the play Frank has no surname, but when the film
Shirley Jaffe (actress) Shirley Jaffe (actress) Shirley Jaffe is a British actress who returned to acting in 2002 after teaching drama for 20 years, and performing in murder mysteries and poetry recitals. Shirley trained at the Central School of Speech & Drama in 1954, and among other jobs was in the first British Theatre in the Round Company at Scarborough with Stephen Joseph and later Alan Ayckbourn, and in the last year of long running TV serial "Emergency Ward 10" as Nurse Angela Foster. Shirley's film work began in 1970 as a maid in Peter Sasdy's "Taste the Blood of Dracula". In 1971