Shirley Valentine

I had the pleasure of attending Oldbury’s production of Shirley Valentine.

This was a one woman show with Jo Foley taking the role of Shirley Valentine. If any of the audience were expecting the film version they would have been disappointed. However the play came before the film with the play only having one character, and this production was true to the play.

The curtains opened to a classic 1980’s kitchen which was striking and well put together congratulations to the team it was really effective and boded well for what was to come. Even with water being emptied into the sink in the kitchen.

This play was co-directed by Rachel Jefferson and Sarah Wilkins who themselves admitted in the programme that they were inexperienced. This certainly did not show in this production and well done to them both you are a credit to Oldbury. Oldbury are fortunate in having a lot of talented people helping with the production and what I did like was seeing a list of their biographies within the programme so many of them with graduate qualifications in some aspect of theatre and this shows during the production. Well done to them all there was not an area that did not perform well.

The clothes and hairstyle were typical of the period and nothing was left to chance re period features.

Then we come to Shirley Valentine.

Jo Foley’ s interpretation of the role. I don’t think there are enough words to say about her performance. It was extremely polished and well-acted. Her diction was amazing even when with her back to the audience every word could be heard clearly, this is not easy to accomplish so well done Jo. Not only her diction but her accents were true and even when slipping from one to another they stayed the same. I loved the school Nativity where the accents were so true to life it was unbelievable. Her character skills were brilliant and her acting second to none. I felt and so did others that we were there in the room with her and she was talking to us, also when in Greece you felt the same,  and that we were the wall or the stone. How she managed to remember all her lines,  my understanding is that there is 42 pages of dialogue to be learnt not many can accomplish that and perform at the same time.

Words can’t do justice to this performance so congratulations Oldbury and thank you for the invite

Ann Pollard

NODA D8 Asst Rep

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.