Fall in love with life on a baking hot Greek island with the woman who has had enough of being unappreciated.
“Don’t say maybe, maybe,” sang Natalie Bassingthwaighte on the track ‘Voodoo Child’, back in her Rogue Traders-fronting days.
It may as well be the catchcry of frustrated housewife Shirley Valentine, who experiences a never-too-old awakening on an idyllic Greek island holiday in Willy Russell’s beloved one-woman play. It was adapted into a big-screen adventure for stage star Pauline Collins, who shared the limelight with Joanna Lumley and Tom Conti.
Bassingthwaighte fronts this new staging at Melbourne’s grand old dame, the Athenaeum, as directed by theatrical wonderwoman Lee Lewis. She’s in good hands, with Lewis having run both Queensland Theatre and Sydney’s Griffin Theatre, where she helmed another smash hit solo show, Prima Facie.
An empowering tale for the ages, Shirley Valentine introduces us to the Liverpudlian who was breaking the fourth wall way before Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. Literally. She’s so bored out of her mind looking after her lazy husband that she monologues at the kitchen wallpaper while fixing him chips and eggs for dinner. So when her best mate wins a trip for two to Greece, she thinks, ‘What the hell?’ and makes a break for the sun by her side.
But how easy is it to go home to a monotonous bloke’s crushing mundanity when you’ve fallen head over heels for the Mediterranean lifestyle, all fresh food and delicious wines by the sea (and maybe tasting a local hot guy delicacy too)?
It’s the ideal role for Bassingthwaighte, who has made a career out of taking big swings and hitting. Shirley Valentine marks her latest victory since shifting from Neighbours to the music world, hosting X-Factor and on to the stage, where she has excelled as pill-popping mom Mary Jane Healy in the Alanis Morrisette-driven musical Jagged Little Pill and as good-time girl Roxie Hart in Chicago.
Lewis is as keen as we are to see what she can do in this gift of a role. “Shirley was the original clarion call for women to break out of the boxes they had been shoved in and make a new deal with life filled with joy and potential,” she says.
“Shirley is the courage, the laughter, the friendship and the ballsiness we all hope to have when facing huge obstacles. She is the OG. And Natalie brings an understanding of the courage and fight that has to live inside every woman who wants to live her best life.”
Find out more about the play and get tickets at the Shirley Valentine website.
