Claire Sweeney and Matthew Kelly Headline Educating Rita at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory

Willy Russell’s Olivier Award-winning play Educating Rita is coming to London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, starring Claire Sweeney as Rita and Matthew Kelly as Dr. Frank Bryant. The revival will open on April 25 and run through May 12, before beginning a U.K. national tour. Tamara Harvey directs.

Educating Rita is the Pygmalion-like account of a young, brash Liverpudlian hairdresser trying to enrich her life by going on an English Lit Open University course. Her fresh, unschooled reaction to the classics challenges the attitudes of the University and her lecturer Frank, who begins to question his own understanding of his work and himself.

Sweeney has been seen on the West End in Chicago and Guys and Dolls. She toured the U.K. in Legally Blonde, starred in a new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s one-woman show Tell Me On A Sunday, and headlined in Fosse - The World Tour. Her television work includes British hits Brookside, Clocking Off, Merseybeat and Candy Cabs.

West End vet Kelly won an Olivier Award for Of Mice and Men. His U.K. stage credits include Legally Blonde, Buried Child, Waiting for Godot, Spamalot, Lend Me a Tenor – The Musical, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Amadeus.

Educating Rita will be designed by Tim Shortall, with lighting design by Paul Anderson.