The Royal Lyceum Theatre has launched its 24/25 programme with the Pitlochry Festival Theatre production of Shirley Valentine.
Sally Reid holds the audience in the palm of her hand during the two-act play about a bored middle-aged Liverpool housewife escaping to a Greek island for a holiday of self-discovery. Playwright and former hairdresser Willy Russell’s work has stood the test of time, he suggests because he was able to remain in Liverpool as opposed to leaving for London with an ambition to write for the West End.
As a working-class writer, Russell has been rightly critical of the British education system where working-class talent, lives and voices have since been greatly submerged. So much so that we continually have to return to the past to find authentic writing that articulates the lives of women such as Shirley Valentine.
Originally written in 1986, his former job as a hairdresser was perhaps one strain that helped his gift for writing authentic female voices in work such as Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita, two of the most memorable female film performances of the 1980s. The play is reminiscent of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series, we are party to Shirley in a 1980s domestic kitchen cooking her husband “chips and egg”. He’s a detached, disinterested male who overlooks the colourful character he is married to, who gradually begins to remember who she used to be while realising that life is slipping away.
The vibrancy of Liverpudlian life, language and humour are brought to life by Reid who inhabits the role with some gusto.
Many will remember Pauline Collins as Valentine in the 1989 film, she had also played the role on stage in London and Broadway but Sally Reid has no trouble in making the role her own.
Shirley Valentine, The Royal Lyceum Theatre, runs until 29th June and then at Pitlochry Theatre from 4 July – 28 September 2024.
