Amana - Liverpool is a long way from the Greek Islands, but the return distance can seem even farther.
In Willy Russell’s play, Shirley Valentine, the current production at the Old Creamery Theatre’s Studio Stage, longtime Creamery favorite, Marquetta Senters plays the title role—in fact, the only role—unless we count her kitchen wall with which she converses or a rock she comes to favor. Shirley Valentine, now Shirley Bradshaw, is a middle-aged Liverpool housewife who is offered a two-week (or a fortnight’s in the language of the play) vacation on the Greek Islands. She has some hesitation about accepting this gift from her friend Jane. She relates to her kitchen wall a telling scene with her grown daughter and a chance encounter with a former schoolmate providing some of the impetus for her to take advantage of the chance to be Shirley Valentine again, leaving behind her mundane married life for the travel she longed for as a girl. She knows, too, that her husband will not approve and will do all he can to talk her out of her adventure. So she decides not to tell him but to leave him a note on the day of her departure.
That’s the first act: two scenes in which she makes up her mind. The second act gives us Shirley Valentine on holiday in Greece, where she fulfills a lifelong dream of sitting at a table by the sea and having a glass of wine made in the country in which she drinks it, and where she recovers her sense of herself and experiences a fleeting romance. That’s the story, and it may not sound like much but that doesn’t take into account the wit and wisdom of Russell’s play, his grasp of revelatory detail, or the extraordinary character of Shirley Valentine. Nor does it take into account the power of Ms. Senters to inhabit a character, bringing out the various facets of her character with impeccable comic timing, dauntless courage, powerful intelligence, and her superb ability to plumb the emotional depths of a woman’s sometimes painful progress toward greater self-knowledge and full acceptance of life—with a capital L.
I freely admit that I have a particular bias in favor of any production in which Marquetta Senters appears. If some of you have read other blog reviews I have written, you can guess that I would attend a reading of a telephone book if I knew the reader would be Ms. Senters. Creamery audiences know her skill as a clown. Her mobile face and body can render an audience helpless with laughter. Great clowns very often have a depth of feeling as well: think of the sad face of Emmett Kelly or on the distaff side the great Nancy Walker or Martha Raye. They had the ability, as does Marquetta, to get us laughing with the first part of a sentence and crying by the end. Like them, Marquetta does it with such seeming ease that it becomes something miraculous to be enjoyed and treasured.
Ms. Senters is aided in her portrayal of Shirley Valentine by the evocative settings designed by Tom Milligan and by the intelligent and sensitive direction of Rachael Lindhart. It is a production you shouldn’t miss. I urge you to order tickets promptly: the opening matinee was very nearly a sell-out and the audience proved to be exceptionally responsive and rightly so.
Shirley Valentine runs through July 22 on Old Creamery's Studio Stage, Thursdays and Sundays at 3:00, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30. Tickets are $27 ($17.50 for students; student rush tickets are also available no earlier than 30 minutes prior to each performance, for $12 with ID).
This show is recommended for mature audiences.
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