Educating Rita

On the Thursday night of Mar 8, just following the previous night when I saw the performance “29+1” at HK Arts Centre, I went to HK Arts Centre again, to see another extremely relevant show to me, “Educating Rita”.
When I first saw the introductory passage of this theatrical work in BC Magazine, I was totally attracted by its title. Like “29+1”, this title was again so close to me that I mustn’t miss this performance too. Reading the descriptions, I got the idea that this theatrical work presented Rita (the main character)’s thirst for education, hoping to change her life. Well, quite similar to me! Rita learnt from the university professor, Frank (another main character), who discussed and interacted with Rita largely, later was even inspired by Rita and developed a very special kind of relationship with Rita……

On that night, I was excited to see this award-winning theatrical work. Once stepped into the Mcaulay Studio, however, I knew it mustn’t be that good as what I expected, as least not that good as what I saw the previous night (“29+1”). Inside the Studio, there were at most ……20 people (more or less). The Studio was really small, yet still not full. And, all of them (even not all, should be 99% of them,) were foreigners.

When the performance started, Julie Walters (as Rita) spoke sooooooo fast that I couldn’t hear what she said at all. Yes, maybe she should speak fast, because she needed to behave eagerly, vigorously (thirst for education and learning all along). I tried very hard to catch what she said, but not successful at all. Even worse, the content of her conversations with Michael Caine (as Professor Dr Frank Bryant) should contain a lot of English-specific events/ scenes/ slants which I didn’t have any knowledge at all. Many times when the middle-aged foreign couple next to me laughed, I didn’t know what they laughed for, because I couldn’t hear and/ or understand what Rita and Dr Frank were talking about.

It’s quite sad to be like that. Notwithstanding feeling rather frustrated, I watched the performance from the start till the end. Relatively Rita spoke a lot more than Frank did, a lot faster than he did. Though I didn’t understand what Rita said most of the times, I did agree that she performed it very well, for the gestures, for the tones, for the body languages. Frank was not bad too.

The next day I talked to some of my colleagues, asking for better English-listening skills. One of the conclusions was to watch English movies with English subtitles. I’ve never done this. Well, I must think seriously to squeeze some times to do this, really too bad, no, terrible.