Stephen Tompkinson and Jessica Johnson opened the Wiltshire leg of their tour last night at the Salisbury Playhouse to rapturous applause. Charming, funny, and with inescapable force of emotion, the two actors played off each-other with a great sense of truthfulness.

Gorgeous and detailed set-dressing immediately transported the audience to Frank’s stuffy office: walls of books, parquet flooring, and academic clutter gave real flavour– but the two-walled, corner-of-the-room staging lent an almost voyeuristic verisimilitude to each encounter, strengthened by the play’s use of that one room only.

Tompkinson’s Frank was a fantastic portrayal of the aging alcoholic poet, who couches his vulnerability in literarily acidic phrases: he stifles his yearning for meaning in an academic (and scotch-based) fog with snobbery, and desperately grasps at the candour that Rita overflows with, mired in his own swamp of pathetic irony and insincere allusion. Tompkinson hit each of these notes brilliantly, especially when opposite Johnson’s Rita, as so often happens when two excellent actors come together on stage (not least when it is a two-hander!).

Utterly alive in her role, Johnson gave a Rita whose hunger for that other could not be denied: whether playful or serious, it was always apparent. Johnson’s Rita, too, with each (probably frantic) costume change, displayed an impressively natural development of character that matched Willy Russell’s script.

Frank, at the climax of the play, said Rita’s words rang ‘hollow’: it is fortunate, then, that nothing of this production did.


Educating Rita is on until the 22nd June. Tickets are available via Wiltshire Creative.