Had a re-watch of this last night. I requested seeing the stage play with department collegues as a 'leaving' treat at the end of 1980 - I remember running along Piccadilly from the new American hamburger place so as not to miss the start.

Julie Walters looked so young in contrast with only last week when she was Victoria's horrible old mother Petula, farting in her hospital bed as she made her 'living will'. Her make-up was flawless in ER but her white face didn't match a tanned neck, which was a shame.

I've seen the film so often I kept waiting for lines to come up, such as when she's seen 'Macbeth' at the theatre and tells Michael Caine: 'Wasn't his wife a cow!' or asks 'Did you bugger the Bursar?' when he's packing up his books ready to leave for Austrailia. Great writer, Willy Russell and I think 'Blood Brothers' is still on in town.

I was reminded of Michael Caine's versatility, too, having watched some of the Daily Mail give-away DVDs recently, where he usually plays a detective or a gangster or a spy.
A surreal moment was when I asked my husband to pause the recording last night when I went to get some tea but in the kichen I could still hear Michael Caine's voice. He was playing Austen Power's father on a TV channel.

This time I was intrigued about the locations - that dire street where Rita lived with what looked like an aqueduct at the end, the city square , the college grounds, and the railways station - none of it rang a bell.

Sheila

Oh, I adore Educating Rita. A superb, moving, funny film you can watch again and again. Everything's right - including the music, which was wonderful.
Susiex

It was filmed in Dublin, Sheila. The university is Trinity College.

It's such a good film, and the one which reminds me without fail what an astonishing actor Michael Caine is at his best. His face, when she's hugging him goodbye at the airport... makes me cry everytime, and yet you could hardly say he moves a muscle.

Apparently it was filmed in Dublin because they wanted the visual contrast of her world, and his, and Liverpool and its University look too much the same as each other, and Oxford and Cambridge are too well known as themselves... But little things like telephone boxes not being red are a bit disconcerting.

Very early Maureen Lipman, as well.

Emma

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It was fantastic on stage, too. Not Michael Caine, though - I'm trying to remember who it was?

Thanks for the info, Emma. Here's something about the original cast and

production :http://www.willyrussell.com/rita1.html

So, Julie Walters and Mark Kingston, but I can't remember him in anything else. It doesn't mention the West End theatre but I think it must have been Shaftesbury Avenue I where I exceeded my personal best. The American hamburger joint whose name excapes me was so fashionable that it took ages to get served.

Susie, you are so lucky music is something I often don't notice at the time, but I take it you refer to the quirky music when Rita appeared,framed in outline at first under the college archway nd then teetering in high heels along the gravel. And, of course, Maureen Lipman's 'Could you live without Mahler?' I'd forgotten she was in it and she did indeed look amazingly young. She did the hospital scene very well, I thought.Haven't seen much of her since her husband died, although she had a column in the Guardian for a while.

Sheila

The music as I remember it was a swelling kind of wave which kept recurring during the film - I can almost (but not quite) remember it. The whole Mahler thing was sad - Maureen Lipman was v. moving when she tried to commit suicide and we knew that her whole persona and lifestyle was just a smokescreen.
Susiex

I think it was originally at the Aldwych, so presumably an RSC production?

I always feel horribly, horribly sorry for excellent actors who create a part on stage and then don't get the film because they're not a big enough name.

Emma

Susie, I wish I could remember the wave effect, but I think you are right. If it's too obvious that kind of thing gets on my nerves, which is one of the reasons I can't watch 'Gone with the Wind'. So it must have been controlled. I suppose the Lipman part represented a Sloaney sort of person who was just affecting to be sophisticated and intelligent but who was really a shallow dilettante with nothing below the surface -unlike Rita who was keen to learn.

Sheila

It says the RSC, so it may well have been the Aldwych, but could I have run all the way from Piccadilly to the Aldwych, even 28 years ago? Maybe I was running to the tube station.Or maybe the hamburger place was not in Piccadilly at all. What was it called? You sat on high stools and had cocktails with umbrellas and maybe the hamburgers were called after American cities.

Sheila

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Just found a site that says it was on at the Warehouse Theatre - now called Donmar Warehouse - in Earlham Street. So yes, it is a run down Shaftesbury Avenue and across Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus.

Sheila

It was the Hard Rock Cafe, my husband tells me, which isn't even in Piccadilly. I must have been fit to run all that way along Oxford Street.

I think it transferred - I'm sure I didn't see it at the Warehouse, and it certainly ran and ran - so it could easily have been in one of the Shaftesbury Ave theatres. I do remember where I saw it as a pros arch theatre, so maybe I'm remembering it at the Aldwych because I did about 90% of my theatregoing there...

Emma

Funny, I hardly even remember the play, but I can certainly remember the running. The pace-setter was the keen young drama teacher who took over my role at the school I was director of the annual school plays. At my next school in the Eastend the drama department was separate from English and jealously guarded by a surly young man who had a purpose-built studio that was a wonderful performance space but a nightmare to teach in.

I think it said the play transferred from an RSC venue to the West End bit it's hard to see how it could be done other than on old-fashioned stage.

Sheila

Sheila, you can hear a short excerpt of the music on this:

www.last.fm/music/Mark+Ayres/_/Educating+Rita

(sorry, don't know how to make it into a link)

Susiex

Thanks, Susie, but when I tried copying it into the address line the website said 'Track not Found'. I'll try to look at the tape again later.

Sheila

Oh sorry. I just googled 'Educating Rita: music' and it came up as the first or second item.
Susiex