Willy Russell's work is phenomenally popular with schools, colleges and universities The play was made into a highly successful film starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters, winner of the 1983 BAFTA Award for Best Film. 'Like Roots and Pygmalion ... a touching play about the melancholic ways education often pulls people apart instead of bringing them together' Guardian 'Willy Russell has taken a look at two segments of English society and engineered a collision that is as full of regret as it is of promise' The Times

Educating Rita, about a working-class Liverpool girl's hunger for education, is 'simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending.' Sunday Times Educating Rita premiered at the RSC Warehouse, London, in June 1980. Voted Best Comedy of 1980, it was subsequently made into a highly successful film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.