'Yeats … the wine lodge?' Educating Rita at 40 – in pictures

Willy Russell’s play, about a working-class woman’s Open University education, made a star of Julie Walters. It was first staged 40 years ago this summer – here’s a look back at its history

Playwright Willy Russell in his Liverpool office in 1988. He worked as a hairdresser before becoming a playwright and gave his heroine the same job. ‘I didn’t set out to write an autobiographical play, but the parallels between Rita and me seem glaring now,’ he said. ‘I left school with one O-level and went back to get the education I’d not had.’

Photograph: Rob Cousins/Alamy Stock Photo

The original version ... Julie Walters as hairdresser Rita and Mark Kingston as alcoholic lecturer Frank in the first production of the play, commissioned for the RSC, at the Warehouse, London, in 1980. Walters won an Olivier award for her performance, and the Pygmalion-esque play won comedy of the year.

Photograph: Donald Cooper

Russell himself adapted the play for the film version, directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Julie Walters and Michael Caine, in 1983. Gilbert and Russell later reunited on Shirley Valentine.

Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Larry Lamb and Laura Dos Santos star in a revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in 2010. Frank and Rita discuss several works of literature: Frankenstein, Howards End (‘crap!’ says Rita) and Yeats (‘the wine lodge?’ she asks). Dos Santos had starred in the 2009 radio version of the play.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

When it transferred to Trafalgar Studios, Tim Pigott-Smith took on the role of Frank, pictured here with Laura Dos Santos as Rita, 2010.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

Matthew Kelly as Frank and Liverpudlian Claire Sweeney as Rita at George Square theatre during the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2012.

Photograph: Robbie Jack/Corbis/Getty Images

A revival at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2015 ‘uncovers a potential star in Lashana Lynch’, wrote Michael Billington. She played Rita opposite Lenny Henry

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

‘She has, to use a non-academic term, quite a gob on her’, wrote Alfred Hickling in the Guardian about Jessica Baglow as Rita, alongside David Birrell in a revival at Bolton’s Octagon theatre in 2017.

Photograph: Richard Davenport/The Other Richard

The big 40 tour ... Jessica Johnson as Rita and Stephen Tompkinson as Frank in this year’s revival (interrupted by coronavirus).

Photograph: Robert Day