Frank and Rita share a special bond, evident from the very beginning of the play. In the first instance where they meet, Frank is charmed by her witty brashness. He finds her blunt-but-friendly manner refreshing and warms to her a great deal over the period of the play.

Rita starts off displeased with her life. She craves education and longs to be respected like other women she sees. She tends to idolise people who are seen to be educated, for example Rita Mae Brown who wrote her favourite book 'Rubyfruit Jungle' and this is shown perfectly by how Rita decides to make Rita her namesake. Rita also shows this idolising 'cool, or together' people with Trish, her new roommate. Rita would often talk to Frank about Trish, saying things such as 'She's great. Y'know she's dead classy. Y'know like, she's got taste...Y'know..she's just got it'. The 'idolisation' of these people, show Rita's eagerness to be seen

When Rita moves out from her and Denny's house, it shows how she is changing once again. If I were director, I would show this by having Rita and Denny growing further apart, using dramatic actions, body language and music to accentuate the occasions when Denny loses his temper with Rita; for example when he burns Rita's work and Frank's books when he finds out that Rita is still on the pill. Rita feels that the Relationship has 'fizzled' out and said that "nothing is going to bring her back" and to talk about it, is the same as "crying over spilt milk". Unlike her husband, Rita's horizon's expanded and she realised how small his world is. Her husband is happy with having the choices in his constrained life only being as testing as "being able to go into a pub that sells eight different kinds of lager" or "choosing which washing powder". It is this frustration at what little Denny makes of his life that makes Rita feel as though she has no connections with Denny anymore, he!

She became pretentious, rude and selfish in her speech to Frank upon returning from Summer school, sounding patronising when Frank asks a question about Blake. Rita responds "well, you don't do Blake without doing Experience, do you?". She delivers the line in a very matter-of-fact way. I would show the changes in Rita by having her cut and dye her hair as well as changing her clothes over the summer. These would be good visual aids to show how Rita has changed. Rita is patronising to Frank throughout Act two scene four and tells him "I'm not an idiot now, Frank- I don't need you to hold my hand". This shows how Rita wants to be more independent and thinks she can do without Frank. When Frank tells her that he enjoyed "Rubyfruit Jungle", telling her it's 'excellent', Rita responds with "oh go way, Frank. Of its type it's quite interesting but it's hardly excellence". This sounds very condescending and she is not in the position to deliver a line like that to her 'teacher'. I!

Trish is just as much a phoney as Rita, as she discovers when Trish takes an overdose of pills and almost dies. The shock of how different Trish really was, in comparison to how fabulous she thought Trish was, brings Rita down to earth heavily. It is a great shock for her to learn how wrong she was and it starts her off realising how pretentious she was acting.

Rita's style of dress at the start of the play represents her larger than life character. Her second hand "frocks" are worn with high heels and big hairdos. The fact that she is wearing second hand dresses may perhaps show that she is not being totally herself, or what she would ideally like to be as she is wearing clothes that were once someone else's. if I were directing the play, I would ensure that the visual transformation in Rita's character is substantially visible to the audience so that the actual metamorphosis in Rita's personality is clearer. To do this with Rita's clothes I would make the initial and final appearance look very different to each other, but the changes throughout the play very gradual. Changing more dramatically when something significant occurs such as Rita returning from summer school when he personality has also changed quite a bit. I would show the changes in her appearance by changing her hairstyles or perhaps even changing the colour of her !

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When Trish tries to kill herself, Rita realises that she had been idolising and acting like a fake. Trish was neither 'cool' or 'together' like Rita thought she was. Rita realised that she could pretend to be something all she wished, but underneath, it was all a facade and she realised how she had been acting. I would direct the actress to sound in awe of Trish whenever mentioning her before Trish tries to commit suici

Some common words found in the essay are:
Frank Trish, Rubyfruit Jungle, Frank Rita, Rita Frank, Rita's Frank's, Rita Rita, Office Frank, Peer Gynt, Rita Denny, Blake Rita, summer school, frank rita, rubyfruit jungle, rita changed, rita rita, beginning play, rita's character, original rita, returning summer school, created monster, rita responds,
Approximate Word count = 2568
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)