Educating Rita reprised her radio and Menier Chocolate Factory performance as Rita, and Frank was played by renowned actor Tim Pigott-Smith. Like the Willy Russell season at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the production ran in repertory alongside "Shirley Valentine" starring Meera Syal. A UK tour played in 2012, starring Claire Sweeney and Matthew Kelly as Rita and Frank respectively. A 35th anniversary production was staged at Liverpool Playhouse from 6 February to 7 March 2015, starring Leanne Best as Rita and Con O'Neill as Frank, directed by Gemma Bodinetz. The same year the Chichester Festival staged a production with Lenny Henry and
Educating Eve Educating Eve Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate is a book by Geoffrey Sampson, providing arguments against Noam Chomsky's theory of a human instinct for (first) language acquisition. Sampson explains the original title of the book as a deliberate allusion to "Educating Rita" (1980), and uses the plot of that play to illustrate his argument. Sampson's book is a response to Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" specifically and Chomskyan linguistic nativism broadly. The title, "Educating Eve", was dropped after the first edition because the allusion to "Educating Rita" "was deemed unduly mysterious". The revised edition (2005) contains an additional chapter