Shirley Valentine in Darwin 20th July

Shirley Valentine is a funny and heart-warming one-woman play by the award-winning Willy Russell, starring the effervescent Mandi Lodge.

A middle-aged working class Liverpool housewife, Joe Bradshaw’s life has stagnated. On the wrong side of 40, with a stale marriage and battered self-esteem, she wistfully wants for something more. When her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid trip-of-a-lifetime to Greece, Joe realizes this is the escape she’s been looking for. She packs her bags and heads for freedom, leaving a note on the kitchen cupboard, “Gone to Greece. Back in two weeks!”.

Under the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, Joe rediscovers her former self, ‘Shirley Valentine’, the long-dormant independent woman with the world at her feet. Liberated from her identity as a wife and mother, Shirley re-ignites a flame of happiness long thought extinguished.

Shirley Valentine is directed by Denny Lawrence and is presented by HIT Productions as part of a 2017 national tour.

It is a simple and brilliant idea, the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone – in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving.

“This play is a modern classic and its theme of achieving your full potential remains universal and very relevant today.”
- Director, Denny Lawrence