An anniversary is as good a reason as any for mounting a revival of a popular success.  Willy Russell’s one woman hit is now thirty years old and re-emerges into a changed world that has made huge strides in some areas whilst stubbornly dragging its feet in others.  So whilst some things are quaintly retro in the play there is enough unresolved matter to make Shirley as recognizable a character to a contemporary audience as she was in the late eighties.  The yearning for a life lived to the full is as resonant now as it was then and as it was for Ibsen’s Ellida in The Lady from The Sea in the eighteen eighties. (Both women are confronted with a choice between a husband and a sailor who represents the possibility of fulfilment.)  As she realizes finally, Shirley’s husband is not to blame for her ‘unused life’. The marital conformity, the culture that crushes her also crushes him.  The expectations they have both imbibed are, mutatis mutandis, as limiting for one as for the other

Jodie Prenger’s career subsequent to her success in BBC’s,‘I’d Do Anything’, confirms that she was nothing less than an established continent waiting to be ‘discovered’. (The ranks of Equity being no stranger to such lands.) Her husband in the play is described as an unreconstructed male (back then a ‘male chauvinist pig’) a type unquestionably, yet one, we feel, who has found in his wife more than his match.  Ms Prenger holds in fine balance that paradoxical pairing of qualities we seem to admire in female actresses; toughness and sensitivity.  One could imagine her heading up a posse of residents and giving a local councillor the fright of their lives over some parochial concern or other that has got the suburbs fired up. Neighbours would cross her at their peril. Yet she is capable of swishing elegantly around the kitchen, a bundle of emotional potential looking outward from her kitchen into an as yet undiscovered world for the filling between spring and autumn.

One surprise was in finding her mic’d-up since if anyone has the vocal equipment to reach the back of the auditorium unaided it’s Ms Prenger.  However we soon get used to the novelty of hearing her breathing and the relaxed, familiar style of Shirley Valentine, coaxed out by the direction of Glen Walford, ensures that the slight distancing effect rarely intrudes. Her ear for accents is accurate (too good perhaps?) and her voice runs easily through the gears from not-to-be-gainsaid forceful to a delighted squeak.  She is a Willy Russell woman, the equal of Pauline Collins or Julie Walters and in this part no mere diseuse, but a fully lived character searching for fulfilment. By any standard Jodie Prenger delivers an impressive piece of acting that hints at much more to come.   ★★★★☆    Graham Wyles    11^th April 2017

Photo by Manuel Harlan