Stuck in the kitchen, cooking egg and chips for her husband’s tea, her kids grown and gone, middle-aged Liverpool housewife Shirley Valentine has no one to talk to but the wall.
Of course, that wall – in Willy Russell’s justly celebrated one-woman play Shirley Valentine – is actually the "fourth wall," that exclusive vantage point from which theatregoers can peer into the inner workings of lives that may not be so very different from their own.
As inspiring as it is funny, the tour-de-force monologue is Merseyside-raised playwright Russell’s paean to the possibility of second chances and the vital importance of living an authentic life, as an unexpected travel opportunity comes out of left field to offer a sudden, dramatic, shift in Shirley’s outlook.
The endearing, often dryly witty, character will be coming to vivid life, ‘Scouse’ accent and all – and, presumably, still cooking egg and chips – in front of a local audience from July 17 to 27, at Peninsula Productions’ studio theatre in Centennial Park (14600 North Bluff Rd.).
Embodying Shirley for this production will be experienced, award-winning Burnaby-based theatre and film actor Tamara Prescott (whose breathtaking characterization of combative, alcoholic Martha was one of the highlights of Peninsula’s superlative version, last season, of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).
Peninsula’s resident artistic director, Robert Moloney, is directing the play.
During a recent break in rehearsals at Peninsula’s ‘black-box’ studio theatre, Prescott and Moloney shared insights into the show with Peace Arch News.
Prescott acknowledged that she has been Shirley once before, in 2023 at Metro Theatre.
“But that’s such a big stage – terrible for sound, particularly for this kind of solo show, even though I had a mic,” Prescott said.
“We also didn’t have a lot of time to explore the character. I felt that even as we were ending the show, I was still just at the beginning.”
It was Prescott, Moloney noted, who brought the idea of a White Rock production of Shirley Valentine to Peninsula Productions’ executive director, Janet Ellis.
“I hadn’t acted in this theatre before Virginia Woolf, but after that show I thought ‘how cool would it be to do (Shirley Valentine) in this intimate space,'” she said.
“There are so many layers to Shirley; so much journey to get to where she is, and Robert’s been amazing in guiding me through it. And I love doing English accents.”
Her familiarity with Russell’s work didn’t begin with this play, she added.
“The first play I ever read was Willie Russell’s Breezeblock Park (a comedy of manners about a Liverpool housing estate at Christmas) – I think that’s when I became addicted to theatre.”
Prescott said she started reading all of his plays – and discovered that, long before he became a playwright, Russell made a living as a women’s hairdresser.
Prescott and Moloney theorize that working in a hair salon – a natural "safe space" for uninhibited conversation and confidences – may have helped develop Russell’s ear for dialogue, and his ability to write women characters so well.
Delving deeply into the script for this production has only underlined the brilliance of his writing, Moloney said.
“With a great writer like Willy Russell, every word is there for a reason, and every story that Shirley tells is there for a reason,” Moloney said.
“They are the building blocks of the soul’s journey – but the question is why is she telling these stories?”
“Coming from an actor’s point of view, which I also do, you can have the mindset of simply having to learn and deliver all these lines,” he said (by all counts, anyone tackling Shirley’s extended chat with the audience has more words to remember than an actor playing Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
“But as a director, it’s my job to ask ‘why are you saying this?’ What’s underneath it? Where is this leading us – and the audience?
“Tamara’s doing an amazing job of mining that.”
This is Moloney’s first time working with Prescott, he said, and he’s enjoying the experience of working with a kindred spirit who values getting the maximum out of the material.
“I saw her in Virginia Woolf, and was just blown away,” he said, adding that he had the same reaction when he first read the script of Shirley Valentine.
“It’s so funny, and so heartbreaking,” he said.
“Profound,” Prescott suggested, to Moloney’s instant agreement.
“I think it’s a play that everybody who leaves the theatre will see something of themselves in this character,” he said.
“And that’s a good thing.”
Funny as it is, the story of the unfulfilled Shirley – and how she regains control of her life – is a touching, heartwarming case of theatre fulfilling its age-old functions of both catalyst and catharsis, he agreed.
“I think this play can inspire us to live more really, more kindly and more truthfully – to listen to our soul’s calling.
“There’s a cost to us not doing that – and it’s a heavy cost,” he said.
Thursday and Friday performances are at 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday performances are at 2 p.m.
To reserve tickets, visit showpass.com, or call 604-536-8335.
