In the ‘80s one in five children born in Liverpool were named Brian.
By 1986 two-thirds of all women in Merseyside over the age of reproduction had indulged in sexual relations with a member of The Scaffold (not with Paul McCartney’s brother though, who is a notorious celibate.)
Nerys Hughes was the best comedy actress of her generation…
… and if you believed any of the above you’ll probably think Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine is social realist theatre of the highest order.
It isn’t. It’s twaddle.
Take the central scene of the first act, where Shirley cooks chips and eggs on stage.
That’s right, “chips and eggs.”
Chips.
And eggs.
If I ever get to meet Willy Russell my first question to him will be, “Mr. Russell… may I call you Willy?… Willy… why chips and eggs?”
But then I may just whip the crack on my trap and pony, unleash my arrow and bow, and land the Scouser in the local Emergency and Accident.
Willy! It’s egg and chips.
Eggs is the main, chips are just an accompaniment.
You’re from up North, you really ought to know…
Phew, got that off my chest, so let’s have a look at some other scenes that don’t quite ring true either. Such as the scene where Shirley recalls her mistreatment at the hands of a wicked headmistress.
“What’s man’s greatest invention?” the headmistress asks the class, presumably primary pupils.
We are led to believe that approximately 30 Liverpudlian children out of a class of 31 were unaware of the answer (which is actually language, as Shirley demonstrates. The wheel just gets a lot of good pr.)
When I was at school we had streaming, and the classes were graded from “R” to “S” to “T”, each letter divided into two, making six classes. I was in “3R1”, naturally. But even had Miss Dunwick, our satan-worshipping, fire-breathing, child-hating headmistress, creaked open the classroom door of “3T2” and demanded a sacrifice, I’m pretty sure even the kid we all called “Stig”, owing to his intellectual specialness, would have been able to grunt, “wheel, miss…” This was the height of pedagogical sophistication in South Leeds in the ‘70s.
Even the thickest kids this side of the Pennines knew about the wheel. How come only Shirley on the West coast had an inkling? No wonder Liverpool needed to win European Capital of Culture. Catch up scousers!
Then there’s the story of Marjory Majors. Shirley meets her old classmate Marjory in an amusing incident concerning a puddle, a taxi and some shopping bags. She turns out not to be, as Shirley assumes, an air hostess, but a high class hooker. A whore. Marjory is on her way to service clients in New York, Berlin, Paris, Athens via Liverpool 8. Yeah, right, and I just bumped into my old pal Tristram in Toxteth…
Then there’s the jokes. Some of which are about as convincing as Derek Hatton’s hair dye. Shirley’s mate got turned to lesbianism after finding her husband in bed with the milkman… Just to explain to younger readers, in the ‘70s the milkman was a stock comedy figure. In fact, on my birth certificate under “father’s occupation” it says milkman…You can imagine how fun that was to grow up knowing. So funny.
Benny Hill’s Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West seems positively progressive in comparison:
She said she’d like to bathe in milk, he said, “All right, sweetheart,”
And when he’d finished work one night he loaded up his cart.
He said, “D’you want it pasturize? ‘Cause pasturize is best,”
She says, “Ernie, I’ll be happy if it comes up to my chest.”That tickled old Ernie, (Ernieeeeeeeeeee)
And he drove the fastest milk cart in the west.
The plot is crackers, the jokes are from working men’s clubs and the sentimentalism seems to be recycled from the “Traditional” section of Moonpig Dot Com (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the line about drinking wine in the place where the grape is grown on a Valentine’s card recently) but who cares?
If I wanted political commentary, historical analysis or social insight I’d go to the library. The theatre’s allowed to be a bit daft isn’t it? Really it’s about the performance, and Jodie Prenger is bloody brilliant. I took my sisters and niece last night (we lied to one sister about it being a one woman show as she’d probably not come if she’d been forewarned, she’s a philistine!) and they absolutely loved it. Which is better than a five star review in my book.
Jodie Prenger could perform the collected works of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, solo, and without a synth, and I’d be queueing for tickets. Fortunately she’s still doing Shirley Valentine at Leeds Grand Theatre till the weekend… get off your arses and go, you won’t regret it.