Shirley Valentine – Octagon Theatre, Bolton

Writer: Willy Russell

Adaptor: Mina Anwar

Director: Lotte Wakeham

Get your sunnies out! This stunning one-woman show will transport you to Greece and back.

Mina Anwar captures the audience as Shirley Valentine, a dutiful housewife who feels like life has passed her by. Trying to decide whether to leave domesticity behind for a holiday in Greece, she starts to wonder whether there is more to her life than putting others first.

Anwar has the audience on the brink of responding to her conversational tone, Shirley feels like a character you’ve already met over your neighbour’s fence just moments into the first act.

“I think marriage is like the Middle East- there’s no solution.”

The play is a collection of witty and wry anecdotes from Shirley’s life and ranges from her children’s nativity play mishaps, how her uppity rival from her school days became a high-class hooker, to how her friend Jane is now a feminist after she caught her husband in bed with the milkman. But each anecdote draws back to the heartfelt questions: where does all the time go? How can you be sure you’ve lived your life to its full potential? And what do you have to stay around for right now? These topics speak to modern audiences of all ages and effortlessly strike a balance between making you roar with laughter before putting a tear in your eye.

The stage feels full with the presence of the characters in Shirley’s life we never see, her layabout husband who she cares for like a third child, her daring best friend Jane who’s convincing her to leave, and a whole ensemble of secondary characters who Anwar enacts distinctly. It’s hard to imagine these characters are only Anwar’s creations because their effect on the story is tangible throughout the play.

“I’m not sayin’ she’s a bragger, but if you’ve been to Paradise, She’s got a season ticket.”

The audience sits on all three sides of a studio floor stage making them feel like they are sitting in Shirley’s bright yellow kitchen, the opening set. During the course of the first act, Shirley makes chips an’ egg for her demanding husband in her functional kitchen on stage. The potatoes are peeled, cut, and deep-fried and the fried eggs are cooked while Shirley is speaking to the wall, the direction of all her thoughts in the first act. The real-time cooking delivers on the slice-of-life feel of the show- that’s what overwhelmingly stands out about this production, the commitment to realism and detail in everything it does.

A second act change of scenery to Greece transforms the first act’s speckled kitchen tiles to look like a sandy beach under new lighting. The stage is set to look like a taverna patio looking off into a sunny seaside landscape. During the interval the audience can see the scenery being set, as it happens the sound of a plane flying overhead can be heard and the music changes to a soundtrack to emulate the Greek islands. It’s details like this when the show can really be described as a labour of love in which the audience’s experience of every little detail is considered.

Anwar’s decision to set the play in Lancashire instead of its original setting in Liverpool makes the performance feel even closer to home at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Full of recognisable Lancashire-isms and cultural references from Ellnette to Marks and Sparks, the re-setting feels natural, giving new meaning and connection to Lancashire theatregoers. Anwar pushed for the re-setting as a homage to her hometown, Accrington, and personally visited playwright Willy Russell to ask for the change.

This year is the 40th anniversary of Shirley Valentine; its first production being in 1986 at Liverpool Everyman Theatre. The show went on to open two years later in the West End and won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. But the show wasn’t always smooth sailing. In its opening Liverpool run, Noreen Kershaw as Shirley was whisked away to hospital indefinitely and who was the only person who could take over? Willy Russell himself. He recounts: “I was going on every night playing to packed houses and just asking them to believe that this six foot, bearded male was a forty-two-year-old woman.” Kershaw returned to the show after her recovery, but Russell’s time did not go unnoticed and when Kershaw won Best Actress at the Daily Post and Echo Annual Arts Awards, so did Russell for Best Supporting Actress.

Shirley Valentine is a show with heart and soul that tickles audiences and makes them feel at home right away. But most of all it beckons you to take a holiday from your ordinary life and consider how it has been lived.

Runs until: 8 March 2025