SHIRLEY VALENTINE
by Willy Russell
She stands in her kitchen, peels and slices potatoes, heats a dinner plate in the oven and talks to the wall. Sometimes she reminisces -- about being treated as dumb in high school, about the embarrassing things her son did as a schoolboy, about early married days when love was young and romance was in the air. Mostly, though, she complains. About her stodgy husband's indifference, her grownup daughter's condescension, her neighbor's one-upmanship, and the cumulative tedium of a life in the kitchen of her tastefully conventional house in Liverpool.
Shirley Bradshaw, nee Valentine, could be...