Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 20
Performed by Natalie Bassingthwaighte
Lee Lewis - Director
Willy Russell - Playwright
Simone Romaniuk - Costume and Set Designer
Paul Jackson - Lighting Designer
Marcello Lo Ricco - Sound Designer
Brady Watkins - Composer
Jennifer White - Dialect Coach
Producers: Neil Gooding & Alex Woodward
It’s some twenty years since I was first as surprised as Shirley herself to learn the correct pronunciation of ‘clitoris’. Played then by Sue Howell in the relatively small Canberra Repertory Theatre, I wrote (Canberra Times, Aug 2004) of her interpretation that it “avoids raucous superficial laughter, invokes a quieter response, and allows us time to absorb Shirley's feelings about how her youthful self, Shirley Valentine, became lost in the "cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd" English suburban life of wife and mother Shirley Bradshaw. Her observations about orgasms, men, feminists and English xenophobia are not merely witty, but are little illuminations in self-understanding.”
Natalie Bassingthwaighte, playing today to Canberra Theatre Centre’s almost full “proscenium arch theatre seating 1,244 patrons in one raked tier”
Bassingthwaighte’s success was measured as much in the silence of so many as we absorbed the implications of Shirley’s responses to her situations, at home and away, cleverly built into Willy Russell’s script; as it was in the standing ovation bringing her back on for an extra curtain call. But, I thought, she can’t do an encore!
You only have this weekend to see her in action in Canberra – do not miss the opportunity. Otherwise you’ll have to travel to Adelaide for the Festival, April 1-6.
(Frank McKone's reviews are also available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com)
