WHAT inspired casting by artistic director Damian Cruden for his York Theatre Royal Studio production of Willy Russell's two-hander Educating Rita.

From next Thursday, Robert Pickavance will play the cynical, jaded English literature tutor Frank; Andrina Carroll will be Rita, the scabrous Scouse hairdresser who enrols on an Open University course, rebelling against convention and expectation.

Ask them to reflect on their own higher education experiences, and they mirror the course of Frank and Rita.

Robert first. "I went to university, at the very end of the Sixties. I was studying history and it was absolutely the right place at the right time, and I loved the work, though I can't for the life of me think why I did history - I must have enjoyed it at school - and I became incredibly turned on by the idea of scholarship and learning. That doesn't mean I didn't stay up all night doing all the other things students do but I was drunk on the power of learning.

"So, when I still didn't know what I wanted to do after my degree, I went off to Oxford to do a D.Phil for four years."

It was there that, like Frank, he lost his enthusiasm for education. "I have to say I found it a lot less exhilarating, and I became very depressed, even though there was something exciting about being the only person in the world who knew my particular subject!"

The stage rescued him. "If I hadn't stumbled by pure chance into theatre, it was assumed I was going to become an academic like Frank: a cynical academic. It was another world and I would have been an unhappy, reluctant tutor, and that's what Frank is. Not all my heart would have been in it, and I would have had to pretend to be something I wasn't." Frank all over.

As for Andrina, she came from a "very working-class family", her mother's side working down the Northumberland mines.

"At my school, in London, there was no tradition of going to university and the first time I suggested it I was laughed at... by the school careers' woman. She said 'Oh, come on Andrina, it's not really on', at which point I realised that whatever I did I would have to do it on my own," she recalls. "So I left school at 17, supported my A-level studies through jobs and then when I got to university it felt like a doddle!"

Andrina did a theatre studies degree at Warwick. "I was at university around the time Educating Rita was set, and certainly in my family, on my mother's side there was no history of further education until my uncle went to university and became a doctor. He was the first and the only one until me," she says.

"Although education was encouraged in my family, at school it was assumed that you'd either become a secretary or work at Marks & Spencer. At 14/15 you'd be taken on a 'backstage' tour of Camden's M&S, and I remember thinking 'Am I an alien? Why do I feel I shouldn't be here." Angry, she wanted to express individuality rather than be shepherded down a path that was nothing but a cul de sac. Hence theatre studies, university, and the comparisons with Rita.

Educating Rita was first staged in 1979, the softer film following in 1983, and despite Tony Blair's promise to prioritise the three Es of Education, Education, Education, Robert and Andrina have noted how Russell's 23-year-old concerns chime ever louder today.

"It's almost shocking that most of the things Russell raises and were so pertinent at the time seem to be even more pertinent now, in particular, what is education for?" says Robert.

"Education is now treated as a series of hoops to go through, hoops that you have to pay for because you'll be earning more at the other end. It's this utilitarian view that's now put forward by the government rather than believing in giving access to something that you might not otherwise discover."

Andrina takes up this point. "For kids who come from homes that don't have a lot of money, the idea of any debt is terrifying, and the idea of starting your working life in debt is too daunting for the family to take on," she says.

Much is still to be learnt from Educating Rita.

Educating Rita runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, from February 14 to March 19. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:16 Friday, February 08, 2002