Actress delivers heartfelt Valentine

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

As unhappy housewife Shirley Valentine, Nicola Cavendish is a hilarious wonder, full of humanity.

Plays and movies that are advertised as "heartwarming and inspiring" often prove to be shallow, syrupy and cliché-ridden.

Shirley Valentine, the small-scaled story of a downtrodden Liverpool housewife who manages to grab hold of life by taking a Greek holiday, really is touching and inspiring.

And like a Greek salad loaded with olives and feta, it also overflows with salty, tangy laughter.

Willy Russell's 1986 comedy/drama about self-discovery isn't flawless. With some drippy lines like, "Dreams are never in the places we expect them to be," the one-woman show has been justifiably knocked for spelling out its message a bit too literally.

But Nicola Cavendish, the British Columbia actress who originated the role in Canada and has played it more than 600 times since 1990, gives such a genuine, hilarious, heart-and-soul performance that it transcends the minor weaknesses of the script.

Shirley Valentine opened Thursday at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, directed by Roy Surette. Cavendish, who was about a decade younger than her 46-year-old character when she first played Shirley and is now 13 years older (which only enriches her portrayal), will soon hang up Shirley's frumpy apron and silk kimono for good. So this is Manitobans' last chance to relish a tour de force that puts her in the national-treasure category. (Note: Ellie King is taking the Jan. 14, 21 and 28 evening performances.)

While Russell's mildly risqué script is perhaps worthy of four stars, five stars don't seem adequate to honour Cavendish. One can't imagine any performer bringing more lovable, saucy humanity to Shirley, or giving the character a stronger underpinning of decency, pluck and resilience.

Shirley, whose children are grown but don't relate to her as a person, is deep in a middle-aged rut. Sick of her cold marriage but lacking the courage to leave, she confesses her unhappiness to the kitchen wall while preparing her loutish husband's tea in the first act (the actress actually fries chips and eggs on the appliance-equipped set).

Cavendish's priceless delivery of Shirley's mocking quips, head-to-toe physical comedy and wonderfully expressive face make her worlds funnier than Pauline Collins, who played Shirley on Broadway and in the much-inferior 1989 movie.

But Cavendish also conveys the emotional depth of what Shirley has lost, as when she poignantly recalls a bath lovingly shared with her husband early in their marriage.

While the production is updated to the present with references such as one to George Clooney, it remains a 1980s cultural snapshot, with stereotypical digs at feminism as a man-hating ideology. The narrative of a woman who gives herself a liberating valentine -- permission to deviate from a scripted, servile existence and find empowerment -- certainly had greater political resonance a quarter-century ago.

Yet the story still works beautifully. Who doesn't share Shirley's feeling that there's a great well of "unused life" in each of us, untapped because we're too risk-averse, too dutiful, too self-defeating?

Cavendish creates such intimacy that you feel you're sitting in her kitchen or on the next beach chair, sharing a glass of wine as she regales you with her experiences.

She switches effortlessly among colourful characters that range from a haughty headmistress to ignorant British tourists to Costas, the sexy Greek taverna-keeper whom she nicknames Christopher Columbus. He discovers a hitherto-uncharted island of her anatomy, setting off a response that registers on the Richter scale.

There's nothing earth-shaking about the play, and that's the key to its humble appeal. As Shirley points out, humanity's greatest invention was something ordinary: the wheel. Just let it roll, and it can take you somewhere you've always dreamed of going.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 7, 2012 G5