REVIEW: Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell – Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne

Shirley Bradshaw is stuck in a rut. She’s at home, living her “little life” and preparing dinner for her husband, who won’t be happy with chips and egg. Their kids have grown up and moved out. Her daughter is living with friends and her son is in a bedsit, insisting he’s going to become famous as a busker poet. At least, they are still young enough to have dreams.

Shirley has been offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Greece by a friend whose husband was caught sleeping with the milkman. As scandalous as that was, Shirley cannot imagine rocking the boat so much that she’d leave her husband Joe – even for a fortnight. At the age of forty-two and having dedicated her whole adult life to marriage and kids, Shirley wonders where her young, adventurous self has gone and if she can ever recapture the joy of being Shirley Valentine.

I first encountered Shirley Valentine as the 1989 film version, which we studied in high school. Part of the fun of studying this adaptation of Willy Russell’s play was seeing it evolve from a monodrama into a movie that is still very much about the interior life of Shirley, but with a few actors for Pauline Collins to play off. Actors like Tom Conti and Bernard Hill and Joanna Lumley. A world away from her being alone on stage on the West End.

In early 1992, the Melbourne Theatre Company staged Shirley Valentine with Amanda Muggleton in the title role at their Russell Street Theatre. I dragged a friend and neighbour along just to see how this one woman would do it, being a fan of Muggleton from watching her on Prisoner with my mum. I think this might have been the first play I ever chose to see. All other theatre before that was big musicals (Oliver! with Gary MacDonald as Fagin was my first) or Shakespeare for school.

I was a bit hesitant about seeing this new production because I have fond memories of the film and Muggleton’s performance on stage – the first and last thing I ever saw at the Russell Street Theatre before MTC decamped to the Arts Centre.

Watching Natalie Bassingthwaighte take on the role of the Liverpudlian housewife ready to get her groove back in 1986 brought back so many memories: of hearing Shirley tell stories of being disaffected by her mundane existence; of her husband saying “I love you” as some kind of catch-all apology; of her discovering the pleasures of wine or – finally – the pleasures of the clitoris.

I was worried about the show being dated only to discover that maybe this is a foundational text for me - along with other 80s stories of women casting off the shackles and expectations of life, like the movies 9 to 5 and Romancing the Stone.

For a play and film I haven’t seen in over thirty years, I was surprised by how much had stuck with me. For every moment of cliche cringe – Shirley describes her marriage as like “the Middle East, there’s no solution… keep your head down, observe the curfew and hope the ceasefire holds” (which went down like a lead balloon on opening night), I was reminded of certain things I heard articulated for the first time all those years ago. Like “all men are potential rapists” or that growing old might become a series of regrets. And that “stretch marks are a sign of life”. Sixteen-year-old me learned a lot.

The text is from a moment in time. Shirley doesn’t like to describe herself as a feminist and she’s really got no choice but to stay married – there aren’t many other options for a woman in her early forties who has spend most of her life raising a family. But this production, directed by Lee Lewis, has a striking 2025 sensibility to it. Even as Shirley laments her “unused life” and later tries to forgive her husband’s recalcitrance with the same excuse, Lewis makes sure we understand that his bitterness and biting remarks are a kind of coercive control. Something even a reborn Shirley Valentine doesn’t have the words for.

Bassingthwaighte is remarkably assured through the first two scenes in the kitchen, preparing dinner – actually cooking the meal on stage, and then later making the decision to take off for her trip-of-a-lifetime. She’s charming and funny and embodies sometimes silent regret in a very affecting way. The gloriously perm and the fluffy pink jumper evoke the 80s without it feeling like a parody of the decade.

Simone Romaniuk’s costume and set designs drop us into 1986 through formica bench and table tops, floral wall paper and the kind of lace curtain that was standard in kitchens of the time, even though they quickly got oil stains and – in a couple of incidents I heard about as a kid – easily caught fire.

Early on, Marcello Lo Ricco’s sound design feels like it is over-egging the pudding – with a score that underlines the emotions more the complements them, but by the end of scene one, things start to click. Paul Jackson’s lighting is suitably restrained but snaps into a more sinister wash as hubby comes home. In this moment, we feel the tension that Shirley must feel.

The second act, set in Greece, is a wonderful change of pace, but on opening night, Bassingthwaighte fudged a few lines. It’s a tough ask, on stage by yourself – if you miss a line, there’s no one to save you. But she quickly finds Shirley the character and Shirley the inspiration again and we’re with her on the island of Corfu, hearing tales of Costas and his boat and the thrill of Shirley finding herself again.

And as I sat there in January 2025 watching this new Shirley Valentine, I was also sitting in the Russell Street Theatre in January 1991, seeing the show on stage for the first time. As a kid, it was a revelation. Now, it’s a reflection. I’ve packed a lot into my life in between.

The central premise is still captivating. You cannot always predict or plan where life will take you. And you’re never too old to make a change – or to revisit a play from your childhood and experience it anew.

Shirley Valentine is from another era, but it’s one of those shows that can show us how far we’ve come. It’s funny, and thoughtful and Natalie Bassingthwaighte is wonderfuly captivating; an utter delight on stage.

- Keith Gow, Theatre First

Shirley Valentine is at the Athenaeum Theatre until February 16

Photos: Brett Boardman