Willy Russell’s 1986 monologue is addressed to a kitchen wall. Stuck with domestic chores and a rigid catering schedule – if it’s Thursday, it must be mince – the 42-year-old Shirley Bradshaw has no one else to talk to. The chat is not great, but at least the wall won’t answer back.
In the title role of Elizabeth Newman’s heart-rending production, Sally Reid treats the idea lightly. Her Shirley is bright enough to know talking to the wall is as whimsical as it is desperate, a joke made humourless by repetition. She glides over it for the bittersweet foible it is.
Because in no real sense is this Shirley talking to the fitted units of Emily James’s set (later to be replaced by the Mediterranean sparkle of a bank of mirrored panels). Reid makes us feel she is chatting to each of us individually. This is a spacious theatre, but her masterly control of Russell’s language creates the sensation of a conversation across the dinner table. Surely she’s making the egg and chips for us.
Her technique – if only that were not so dry a word – is to play Shirley as a woman whose downbeat wit belies a natural charm. That, in turn, sits in a thin layer over her turbulent passions. Russell’s deadpan jokes are very funny – and Reid understands his Liverpool rhythms precisely – but this Shirley expects no praise for them.
Rather, in her rare instants of achievement, she draws us in with a beaming smile and a twinkle in her eye. Modest and unassuming, she has lost touch with her inner Shirley Valentine. No longer young and carefree, she is left with regret instead of hope, routine instead of spontaneity. When she glimpses the woman she still could be, she is unaffectedly delighted.
Our shared joy in those brief moments makes her emotional honesty all the more affecting. Reid has the comic muscle to bring in the big laughs, but also the control to draw us in to Shirley’s most vulnerable secrets. Long before the play’s escapist release, she has turned us into intimates. Her insecurities, almost whispered, are ours. She is devastatingly good.
• Shirley Valentine is at Pitlochry festival theatre until 29 October. Touring Isle of Mull and Iona 1–4 November.
