A wry, witty ‘Shirley Valentine’ takes Katonah Classic Stage

Andrus Nichols as Shirley Valentine. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO 

By DAVID POGUE

Here’s the thing about local theater: the writers, actors and directors have nowhere to hide. There’s no motorized stage set, no million-dollar stagecraft to cover the flaws. Most of the time, there’s not even a sound system. It’s just actors 10 feet in front of you in a room. If the performers can’t nail the authenticity, if the director misgauges the pauses, if the script creaks — man, you know it.

It’s even trickier when there’s only a single actor on the stage for the whole evening. They better be fantastic, or the whole thing breaks down.

Mercifully, these pitfalls won’t even occur to you at Katonah Classic Stage’s transcendent production of “Shirley Valentine,” directed by KCS artistic director Trent Dawson and running through May 4 at the Whippoorwill Theater.  (It’s a gorgeous, modern theater, with 186 plush and roomy seats. It is not, however, actually in Katonah. It’s in Armonk.)

“Shirley Valentine” is a 1986 play by British playwright Willy Russell. Like his other hits, “Educating Rita” and “Blood Brothers,” it won a bunch of awards and became a movie. 

It’s essentially a two-hour monologue in three acts. Well, not a monologue, really, because Shirley, a 42-year-old Manchester housewife, feels so trapped and dead inside that she’s literally talking to the walls. (“My feller: What’s he like, wall?” she might say. “Well, he likes everything to be as it’s always been. Like his tea always has to be on the table as he comes through that door. If the plate isn’t landin’ on the table just as his foot is landin’ on the mat, there’s ructions.”)

Shirley is played by Andrus Nichols, a professional New York-based film, TV, and stage actor with a résumé as long as my arm (I’m 6 ‘2). 

As though memorizing the 41-page, unbroken script weren’t enough — it doesn’t even have paragraph breaks — she nails the Manchester accent and, more importantly, the play’s emotional roadmap.

But just because she’s the only person on the stage doesn’t mean that she’s the only character you’ll meet. You’ll get a fleshed-out sense of at least 10 other people, including her loveless husband Joe, her entitled low-achieving twentysomething kids, and her selectively feminist best friend Jane. As Shirley recounts one hilarious episode in her life after another, Nichols brings them to life with changes in mannerisms, voice registers and accents.

It’s Jane’s idea to take a two-week trip to Greece. She needs a break, and invites Shirley to come along.

At first, Shirley finds the idea unthinkable. How would Joe manage without her? “Imagine the face on him. Imagine the face if he had to look after himself for two weeks. Jesus, if I go to the bathroom for five minutes he thinks I’ve been hijacked!”

She learns the answer one Thursday night shortly thereafter. “Well, it’s Thursday, isn’t it? And on Thursday it has to be steak. It’s the Eleventh Commandment, isn’t it?”

Following a hilarious incident involving a coworker’s bloodhound that’s been raised vegetarian, Shirley serves Joe “chips an’ egg” (fried potatoes and fried eggs) — and Joe’s reaction is not pretty. Shirley winds up with his eggs in her lap — and next thing we know, she’s packed and ready to head to Greece. She’s stocked the freezer with meals for Joe. “With a bit of luck,” she says, “he won’t even notice I’m not here.”

She nearly calls off the whole thing when her daughter reminds her that she’s old, and the idea of her on the beach is “disgustin’.” Shirley is wracked with insecurity. 

“After she’d said that, I suddenly had thighs that were thicker than the pillars in the Parthenon. Me stretch marks were as big as tyre marks on the M6,” she says. “Maybe she’s right, maybe it is pathetic. What am I goin’ for?”

In the end, of course, Shirley goes to Greece (we go with her, in Act III). There, her discoveries include the pleasures of sun, sand, and a taverna owner named Costas. 

Nichols’ performance incarnation of the wry, funny, self-aware Shirley is note-perfect. She never seems to be acting. She’s not as frumpy as Pauline Collins, the actress who played her in London and in the movie, which puts a different twist on the way she disparages her own appearance: more of the judgment is in her head than in ours. Either way, her embodiment of Shirley is three-dimensional and complete. I swear, in the final scene, as she decides to become a new person, she literally looks like a different person; thus the standing ovation.

Of course, Nichols has a brilliantly structured script to work with. Playwright Russell serves up a happy ending, but not the one you think you see coming. And over and over again, he delivers feelings without shmoopiness. The grief for Shirley’s unlived life, the thrill of her middle-age blossoming, the twist that husband Joe is, himself, trapped and unfulfilled — Russell lets us take the emotional journey without a megaphone against our heads. 

It’s not 1986 anymore. We can only hope that maybe the Shirley Valentines (and Joes) of 2025 are more inclined to do something about their unfulfilled lives, to make some kind of change, to do more living. Here might be a small first step: This weekend, leave the house, go out to dinner, and treat yourself to the full impact of live theater. This hilarious, moving, and razor-sharp “Shirley Valentine” would make an excellent candidate.

Shirley Valentine runs through May 4. For tickets, visit katonahclassic.com.