Shirley Valentine review

Even allowing for the 1980s context, the more dated attitudes in Russell’s writing jar. There will surely be few modern 42-year-olds who can relate when Shirley frets that she should be “applying for a bus pass and a Zimmer frame”, or wonders why no man has ever been capable of locating her clitoris. Yet the best lines still zing: there’s a choice description of a bitchy neighbour whose lips are so permanently pursed that when she talks it’s “as if she begrudges you the breath”. Smith makes the most of every word, slapping sliced white bread on to a plate for emphasis, turning the word “taramasalata” into a comic aria, and inhabiting each memory, so that we see the effervescent girl she once was, as well as the secretly disappointed, cheerfully coping wife and mother she’s become.

Dunster keeps it all cooking nicely, sometimes literally – we can actually smell the Crisp ’n Dry. And Smith has no trouble winning our hearts. Women like Shirley – working class, middle-aged – are still routinely overlooked, on stage and off. But watching her follow her well-worn path of self-discovery again, I couldn’t help but be reminded of another Russell creation – the mother of Educating Rita’s titular heroine who, at a pub sing-song, reflects desolately that “there must be better songs to sing than this”. There are fresher ways of telling Shirley’s story. There are better plays than this.