Review: Shirley Valentine – Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine has been bestowing its singular limelight on leading actresses since Noreen Kershaw created the role at the Liverpool Everyman back in 1986. Sally Reid, who first tried on that Liverpudlian twang in last year’s award-winning production at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, reprises it for a two-week run on the Royal Lyceum stage. Suffice it to say, Reid deserves all the flowers – her performance is warm, vulnerable, and completely engaging.

On the surface, this monologue tells the simple tale of an 80’s housewife who escapes domestic drudgery for a life beneath a Greek sun. What sets it apart is the quality of the writing which is rich in down-to-earth humour, and laced with the quiet desperation of generations of downtrodden suburban housewives and the working classes more broadly. 37 years since the curtain first rose, Shirley’s concept of the accumulated weight ‘of unused life’ bearing down on a life and robbing it of joy, still rings true.

Reid’s Shirley is easy to sympathise with and root for. Her early conversations with the wall are daft but meaningful, revealing a woman ready for change, but unable to see an escape hatch. When her ‘feminist’ friend sells her house and buys her a plane ticket, all that changes. Under director, Elizabeth Newman, the play enjoys a lick of pace, accelerating Shirley towards crisis, before letting Reid bathe in the fallout.

“…Reid deserves all the flowers – her performance is warm, vulnerable, and completely engaging.”

Emily James‘ set is just right, first a recognisably 80’s kitchen, complete with pine boards, and a working hob. When Reid cracks eggs for her husband’s dinner, she cooks and serves them – don’t go hungry or you may make bad choices when the play is over. Post intermission, we’re relocated to a Greek shoreline, all sand and sparkling waves. It’s a simple, but carefully designed world, and Reid is at home inside. A world populated with memorable characters, from Shirley’s gruff, malcontent husband, to elegantly posh former school-nemesis, Marjorie Majors. There are no caricatures here, only characters.

A woman in a pink top stands at a chopping board preparing dinner.

From Shirley Valentine, photo by Fraser Band.

A woman with red hair smiles happily, the background is shimmering blue.

From Shirley Valentine, photo by Fraser Band.

Kicking sand over her feet, Reid’s Shirley Valentine finds herself, not as she was, but as she is – a human being of 42 with possibilities ahead of her. It’s something gentler, yet deeper than ‘Girl power’, a quiet empowerment expressed with a smile rather than a cheer.

“It’s a simple, but carefully designed world, and Reid is at home inside. A world populated with memorable characters…”

However, Russell never lets the theme overwhelm, or eliminate, the comedy. Whether it’s Shirley’s thesis of the Clitoris, run-ins with nosey neighbours in the lingerie department of M&S, or deconstructing her Greek lover’s seductive patter, you’re never far from a hearty chuckle.

Sally Reid delivers it all with style, taking the audience on a joyful, insightful journey from quiet desperation to sun-kissed liberation. If you’ve seen the wonderful 1989 movie adaptation so memorably helmed by Pauline Collins, you deserve to see the original. It’s a more intimate, immediate experience, and a chance to see a fine actress performing at the top of her game.

The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh presents the Pitlochry Festival Theatre production of Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell.

All Images: Fraser Band