Educating 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 was made he became Dr. Frank
Rita Lawrence Sextet which for a time included the trumpeter Eddie Calvert. They were resident at a London's Thameside Bray Hotel with music arranged by her brother Lawrence. She appeared on British television in Fela Sowande's choir in a programme called "Club Ebony". Another of Fela's brothers, Tunji Sowande, was a barrister but he was also a baritone and they appeared together with Rita supplying a chic presentation and her piano accompaniment to Sowande's singing. Rita gave up being a professional musician and became a telephonist at the British Museum. In her spare time she continued to perform in charity performances. She