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March 28, 2024, 09:00:48 PM

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Shirley Valentine - 2017 stage tour

Started by Sydward Lartle, April 03, 2017, 11:29:48 PM

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Sydward Lartle

My GCSE English class got taken on a school trip to London's West End to see the original stage play (or should I say monologue?) featuring Pauline Collins back in the eighties. Obviously the lines "You think I wanna make fuck wid you" and "boat is boat, fuck is fuck" got the biggest laughs from us. Bloody teenagers, eh.

I thought the film version was pretty good (I do remember some critics at the time weren't keen on it, because Joanna Lumley had yet to have her career revived by Absolutely Fabulous, and Tom Conti playing a Greek lothario was seen as a grave insult to perfectly good Greek actors or something) but Willy Russell 'opened it up' a bit too much, introducing a few too many characters that played better when Shirley described / impersonated than they did when they were suddenly made flesh and blood. The biggest change being her son Brian, who was a proto-crustie / squatter in the film, whereas in the stage play he'd just been a difficult child who'd stolen the show during the nativity play (as well as ruining the show for everybody else).

Anyway, thirty-plus years down the line and the play's back on the road with Jodie Prenger in the title role. I went to see it in dear old 'milk 'n' beans' (Milton Keynes) and very good it was too. Jodie was a very different Shirley - more glamorous, more sassy - but still very effective, and I couldn't help thinking she'd have been an absolutely brilliant stand-up comedienne if she hadn't won that Andrew Lloyd-Webber thingie and got pigeon-holed into musicals - but I assume she's fine with that, since her Twitter account goes by the name 'Musical Missy' (I think). Plus I think she's fit. Which helps.

I don't see a dedicated sub-forum for theatre here so apologies if I've put this in the wrong place or anything.