PLAYING at QUT Gardens Terrace, Shirley Valentine is a funny and heart-warming one-woman play by Willy Russell, starring the effervescent Mandi Lodge (Menopause the Musical; Always ... Patsy Cline).
A middle-aged working class Liverpool housewife, Shirley can’t shake the feeling her life has stagnated.
On the wrong side of 40, with a stale marriage and battered self-esteem, she wistfully wants for something more than talking to the kitchen wall.
When her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid trip of a lifetime to Greece, she realises 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, Shirley rediscovers her feisty former self. Liberated from her identity as “just a wife and mother”, she reignites a flame of happiness long thought extinguished.
- QUT Gardens Terrace, 2 George Street, Brisbane, June 13, 7.30pm; June 14, 11am and 7.30pm, $46/$40 - www.gardenstheatre.qut.edu.au
