“STAND-UP funny man Alan Glover is engaged in a very different sort of comedy in Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita, which is being staged by Wollombi’s Valley Artists from May 9.

Glover is cast as Frank Bryant, a jaded, middle-aged academic with a fondness for the bottle.

Bryant, who is employed at a northern England university, is assigned as a tutor for Rita, a hairdresser who enrols in an open university literature course to seek escape from the routines of her job and social life.

Frank initially has misgivings about Rita’s ability to adapt to academia but is gradually won over by her enthusiasm and sincerity.

Rita is played in the two-character full-length play by Cath Patterson, a member of the Central Coast’s women’s harmony group Coastal a Cappella, who is making her theatre debut in the production.”