(Right: Lisa
Bobbert)
Durban theatre darling Lisa Bobbert is to
revive her award-winning title role in the celebrated, one-woman comedy-drama, Shirley Valentine, a flagship production
among The Playhouse Company’s exciting line-up for the 2019 South African
Women’s Arts Festival (SAWAF) in August.
Now in its 23rd year, the festival is always
an eagerly anticipated celebration of women and their role in and contribution
to the arts. Coinciding with August being Women’s Month, the event is a
highlight on the calendar of The Playhouse Company, an agency of the Department
of Arts and Culture, which embraces the government’s principles of social
cohesion and nation-building.
Shirley
Valentine is among a diverse spectacle of drama,
dance, music, topical discussion and craft assembled for the 2019 festival,
which this year runs from August 7 to 10.
Directed by Steven Stead, designed by Greg
King and with lighting design by Tina le Roux, the delightful, uplifting play
by England’s Willy Russell was first staged in Durban by the KickstArt theatre
company 11 years ago. It went on to be a highlight of the Hilton Arts Festival
at Hilton College.
To be presented, as part of SAWAF, at 19h30
daily from Thursday to Saturday, August 8 to 10, in the Playhouse Drama, Shirley Valentine focuses on an
individual with lost dreams and a lack of purpose, who then discovers the
opportunity and courage to change her life for the better.
Shirley
Valentine stars Bobbert (My Fair Lady, Abbamaniacs, Cabaret, Little Shop of Horrors, Glitter
Girls, Into the Woods) in a tour de
force performance that saw her receive three Durban Theatre Awards in 2008:
Best Actress, Best Solo Performance and Best Comic Performance (Female).
The production, revived for another
successful Durban season in 2013, also took the Durban Theatre Award for
Stead’s directing.
The spotlight is on a bored, middle-aged
Liverpool housewife, Shirley, who finds herself in a rut, wondering what
happened to her life, when she starts talking to the kitchen wall while
preparing her husband’s chip-’n-egg.
Then her best friend wins an
all-expenses-paid trip to Greece for two, and Shirley starts to see the world,
and herself, in a different light.
In his review of the earlier production,
Keith Millar’s review for artSMart said: “In a word. Wow! … a production of
sheer class and style. This is as good as it gets”.
Willy Russell, who wrote Shirley Valentine, also wrote the
comedy-drama Educating Rita (1980)
and the hit musical Blood Brothers
(1983).
Shirley Valentine was first staged in
England in 1986, when it starred Noreen Kershaw under the direction of Glen
Walford. In 1988, it opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End,
where it starred Pauline Collins. Directed by Simon Callow, that production
received London’s Laurence Olivier Awards for best actress and best new comedy.
Pauline Collins went on to fill the title
role in the popular 1989 film version which, directed by Lewis Gilbert, earned
Collins a Best Actress Oscar nomination. The movie also starred Tom Conti.
Tickets range from R120 to R150 and can be
bought at the Playhouse box-office – phone 031 369 9596/40 – or online and at
Pick n Pay outlets via WebTickets (the customer support line is 086 111 0005).
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