Rita ... Ann Smith
Frank ... Hugh Farey
Director ... Allan Flaxman
Assistant Director/Prompt ... Sally Handley
Wardrobe, Props, Set Dressing ... Carmen Orgee
Lighting & Sound ... Sid Durden
Set Design & Construction ... Hugh Farey
St Richards School for rehearsal space & props
Peter Goodson for Set Furnishing
Jim Rolt for Sound CD
Ann Smith Conquers Conquest Audience as Rita
A stunning and vivacious performance from local dentist Ann Smith as Rita, the Liverpudlian hairdresser with intellectual aspirations, enraptured a first night audience at the Conquest Theatre in March.
Rita’s attempt to improve herself is perhaps more widely known through the 1983 film starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters, but the deep relationship between the aspiring Rita and her tutor, the alcohol dependent Frank, is much more keenly portrayed in the two-hander play first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980. In this latter form, stripped of the extraneous characters of the film version, the play is much more engrossing as it explores the crossover between Rita’s blossoming and emergence as a new person, and Frank’s descent into alcohol fuelled self doubt and self destruction, exacerbated by his concern that he is confronted with the with task of transforming this unpretentious woman into an intellectual sophisticate.
Ann Smith and Huge Farey (Frank) both achieved their respective transformations with exemplary character acting: the former, a brash and foulmouthed hairdresser to a sophisticated and cultured woman who abandons her working class background, and the latter a cultured, tortured university don and writer to disgrace and, presumably, oblivion after his drinking habits have finally driven the authorities to banish him to Australia.
Comedy and tragedy are no easy mix in any literary form, but this production, directed by Alan Flaxman and Sally Handley, handled the two extremes with great subtlety and élan. Both actors showed impeccable comic timing whilst demonstrating an equal ability to switch the mood to one of pathos. Although the audience on the first night acclaimed the performance, particularly Ann Smith’s Rita, with thunderous applause, unfortunately this production did not receive the support it so richly deserved. Due to poor bookings two midweek performances were dropped, and both actors and production staff were understandably saddened given the hard work they had all put in to present this intriguing play to Bromyard audiences. Ann Smith had to work particularly hard to develop her ‘scouse’ accent, which she did with marvellous exactitude throughout the play (it still lingered when this reviewer spoke to her a few weeks later), and should the powers that be at the Conquest consider a revival in the none to distant future I would strongly urge those who missed it first time around to avail themselves of the opportunity.
This review appeared in the Bromyard Publication 'Off The Record' in May 2006