Shirley Valentine
By Willy Russell

“It is a simple and brilliant idea…the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone – in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving.”
Michael Coveney, Financial Times

Shirley Valentine, tired of the same old routines, speaks of the excitement of not knowing what will happen next. The play is about escape and takes the form of a monologue by a 42-yearold Liverpool mother and housewife, Mrs Joe Bradshaw, before and after a transforming holiday to Greece. Inside Mrs Joe Bradshaw is the former Shirley Valentine longing to emerge. Her self-esteem battered by school, marriage and life in general, she finds herself talking to the wall while her husband is out working. “I always said I’d leave him by the time I was 40,” she says. “But by the time I was 40, there was no place to go.” She feels that her life is terribly mundane as she compares scenes in her current life with what she used to be like and feels she has stagnated. When her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid vacation to Greece for two, Shirley grasps the opportunity to head for the sun and leave her current drudgery behind, to re-find herself, follow her dreams and to get a new lease on life. The note in the kitchen reads “Gone to Greece, back in two weeks”. Here on an unknown island, Shirley has no earth-shattering epiphanies, no religious awakening (she does have great sex) but more importantly she realizes that her dreams are not where she thought they would be waiting. And in the end she must face a second decision: should she return home to her husband or stay and indulge the new found freedom that is offered?