Review: SHIRLEY VALENTINE Lightens Up The Season at Brookfield Theatre Of The Arts

If you thought memorizing monologues was hard, imagine memorizing the whole show! The one-person show was always the one form of play that I would never be able to do. I'm fine with memorizing lines but to be the only one on stage without anyone else to play off of or to get help from, it's a daunting task. One that Susan Pettibone seemed to undertake with ease! Shirley Valentine is a lovely romantic comedy- written by Willy Russell and directed by Jane Farnol- that follows Shirley, a middle-aged woman in England, as she juggles the traditional gender roles of her childhood with the new freedoms and choices that women have now. While we learn a lot about Shirley's many friends and family, the only people who ever step foot on the Brookfield stage during the performance are the stage crew who run the transitions: Pettibone handles the voices and physicalities of these other characters without breaking stride. As someone who does voice acting, I was impressed with how Pettibone was able to keep all of her voices straight while also being able to keep the flow of the play moving. Now, it was by no means a flawless production- in Theater that is an impossibility- but the flaws that cracked through were so subtle that an everyday viewer would hardly notice: such as skipping a line accidentally and having to restart a passage to get it right or taking a moment to pause and remember what comes next. None of these events, however, should be faulted on Pettibone: they are simply the realities of literally performing a 90-minute play by oneself.

In a show that demands so much from a single actor, it's the Director's job to make structure of the chaos, and that is exactly what Farnol was able to do: she was able to set her actor up to succeed and crafted a beautifully uplifting story around her. She worked hand-in-hand with her production team to create an efficient, yet richly detailed world to place this story in: Most notably being the set, designed by Andrew Okell. The fully decked out kitchen set looked like the suburban home of a middle-aged couple of empty nesters; I found myself wondering how they were going to change the set between the acts, when the program said we were going to Greece. With some simple sign changes, rotation, and a tastefully placed net, the second act began, and I completely forgot that we just came from a kitchen into this.

All in all, the village came together to raise a child, putting all of their skills to the stage to blow the audience away with a light-hearted, uplifting, and hilarious story that brought us all to the sunny shores of Greece; or, at least how we imagine that would feel.

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