Non-MX Interviews: Andrew Gillies (3/10 Uptown Magazine)
Uptown Magazine 3/18/10: Andrew Gillies
Working-class hero: Educating Rita is a very funny (and very poignant) play about a Liverpool hairdresser's pursuit of higher education
Jared Story 2010-03-18
First produced in 1980, Willy Russell's Educating Rita follows the relationship between an over-the-hill university professor and a young working-class wife.
A Liverpudlian hairdresser, Rita is discontented with her plebeian lifestyle and enrols in an evening university course in English Literature. Her teacher, Frank, is also disgruntled - he's got a beef with the formal education system and is only teaching the course to fund his alcohol addiction. Despite his resentment and pessimistic personality, Frank is impressed with Rita's energy and enthusiasm, which is why he's hesitant to tutor her.
"They embark on this process where Frank keeps warning Rita to retain her uniqueness, retain her own viewpoint," says Andrew Gillies, who plays Frank. "He'll teach her how to do the method, ie, quoting all the accepted authorities, doing the exams the accepted way, performing the expected ritual, he just doesn't want her to disappear like all his other students, who just follow the formula and get the pass. It comes to the point where he realizes what he's produced is exactly what he was afraid of."
Gillies is very familiar with Educating Rita. In fact, the 60-year-old U.K.-born, Nova Scotia-based actor is a major reason Manitoba Theatre Centre is staging the story.
"I first brought this project to Steven (Schipper, MTC artistic director) four or five years ago," Gillies says. "Eventually he came to me and asked me how I felt about doing the rural tour and, since I hadn't done a tour since I was a young actor in Vancouver (Gillies attended Simon Fraser University and worked at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company), I thought, 'Yeah why not?' The catch was later we would mount it here at the Mainstage."
MTC's 2007 regional tour of Educating Rita featured Mairi Babb as Rita, a role she is reprising.
"She's a wonderful actor, so committed and dedicated," Gillies says. "One of her challenges, because this girl is from working-class Liverpool, she has to adopt that accent. For Mairi to do it so effortlessly is a real coup, because it's not easy. Plus the added difficulty is that most North American audiences have trouble with thicker accents, so she treads this superb fine line of making it very clear and still retaining that earthy essence of this character."
That "earthy essence" is important, as ideas of social class distinction are prevalent in Educating Rita. At one point, Franks invites Rita and her husband over for dinner, but Rita declines the offer. Frank doesn't understand why Rita would feel out of place in that situation.
"Franks asks 'Why? Why?' which is somewhat naive of him," Gillies says. "He doesn't understand. He was born and bred into this intellectual, higher-educated world, and he has no understanding of the courage it takes for her to do this, to take this journey."
In addition to class, themes of freedom, change and the inadequacies of institutional education come up in Educating Rita.
"It all sounds a bit weighty, but the play is very poignant and very funny," Gillies says. "The clash of these two completely different viewpoints induces some huge laughter and that's what's so refreshing about this play."
EDUCATING RITA
Manitoba Theatre Centre
March 18 - April 10, The John Hirsch Theatre Mainstage
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