HELEN MUSA previews the new production of Willy Russell’s seminal 1986 play Shirley Valentine, starring screen identity and pop singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte in the title role.

“Unfortunately, the story is perennial,” director Lee Lewis says of Shirley Valentine, British playwright Willy Russell’s seminal 1986 play.

Lewis is directing the new production of the famous play starring screen identity and pop singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte in the role of Shirley Valentine Bradshaw, the repressed Liverpudlian housewife who breaks free of her constraints when the chance comes to head for Greece on holiday.

The play well and truly precedes the #MeToo movement, as well as “strong women” plays such as Fleabag, Prima Facie, RBG and Julia, and has become a byword for feminine strength and resilience. 

“It’s such a necessary play,” Lewis says.

Shirley Valentine is very familiar to Canberra audiences from a long-running production by the late Raymond Omodei, starring Amanda Muggleton, who appeared on stage starkers to wild applause as the curtain rose on the second half of the play. 

That production, originating in Perth in late 1988, went on to tour the country during the ’90s, meaning fame and fortune for all associated with it.

But Shirley’s Act II appearance when she makes it to Greece, though not starkers, still elicits cheers, Lewis says, and the play attracts female audiences in droves, although brave males can be seen cringing in the stalls. She says it’s a hard watch for men but that, surprisingly, it’s not a male-bashing play.

“I didn’t see Amanda in the part, but I know her and I can imagine how divine she was,” Lewis tells me. “She came along one night and it was wonderful to see her there. She told me that Shirley Valentine was a huge part of her life and she had done over 1000 performances.”

“Willy Russell’s writing is extraordinarily beautiful, but it has a sadly confronting quality… there are layers and layers as he depicts an unhappy family and there’s a very light critique of the religious structures and particularly the Catholic Church.

“Our production is still set in the 1980s and there are some sentences that come from a long time ago, but the dynamics of our relationships and the humanity inside that script is so present that it’s still a wake-up call.”

“You’ll be transported back to the 1980s and many people will have that flash of recognition, also there’s cooking on stage so it’s a reminder to us of the very ordinary.

“At the time it first appeared, it was revolutionary and that’s why it’s been seen all around the world. Perhaps it’s not revolutionary now, but it does resonate in our society and many women on seeing it are asking: ‘How did I let that happen to me?’ 

“The sad thing is that among the audience members there are large groups of women saying how it reminds them of themselves.

“It’s in the fine theatrical tradition of women actually saying no. Now she’s a waitress in a taverna in Greece and that’s close to being the happy version of herself. You have to be really brave to do that. 

“What I love about Shirley Valentine is that she’s really smart and so is Willy Russell.

“She’s not educated, she doesn’t have university knowledge but she has life knowledge and she says it’s not all men’s fault, we did it to ourselves. Shirley is very generous and says leaving her husband Joe for Greece is good for him, too. 

“Joe needs a holiday, too; he needs to be loved.”
Lewis believes Shirley Valentine is not an essay, it’s a play in which the character finds her younger self. 

“I’m going to come back to this play in 10 years’ time and I can imagine that that would be a universe in which a man could be a Shirley,” she says.

Lewis has spotted a funny part in the play about Shirley’s son getting stuck with the part of Joseph in the nativity play – Joseph is a pretty thankless part, too.

“It’s a beautiful reflection on her husband’s role in life and the way the men are trapped too. This play is about the way you get yourself untrapped.”

Shirley Valentine, Canberra Theatre, March 19-23.