Educating Rita is about Susan, a married woman in her twenties working as a hairdresser who signs up for a course at the Open University because she is eager to learn and discover what the world of knowledge and erudition has to offer. She is constrained by her working class, somewhat un-aspirational upbringing and feels that in order to discover herself she must becomed cultured. Susan has changed her name to Rita because Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown is her favourite book. Her husband, Denny, urges her to have a baby and strongly opposes her decision to go to university - he seems to feel that she is betraying him and rising above the lives they were born into. When the play opens Rita meets her tutor for the first time. Dr Frank Bryant is an unsuccessful middle-aged academic with a drinking problem who has no experience in teaching working-class students but who has agreed to tutor OU students because he needs the money.

Whilst the play is entitled, 'Educating Rita', it is actually more of a mutual education as Frank gains from Rita's fresh outlook enormously. Frank is incredibly frustrated and unfulfilled, and Rita fills some of his void. Rita is naive in many respects, but she does have enormous introspect. Rita's growth as a human is hugely rewarding for an audience, as she takes such pleasure in what she is learning and treats everything with avid enthusiasm and humour. "Educating Rita" is a tragedy in every sense, as Rita's fate is 'pre-ordained' by her own inate flaw of ambition, and she fumbles on oblivious to the warnings she is presented with. As she grows personally, Frank feels left behind and watches Rita become one of the students he can't tolerate. What he admired in Rita, her childlike aspirations, have become reality and Frank cannot cope with his creation.