Kitchen Beefs

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

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 a bit of a bore, and a one-woman play about her could degenerate into a dutiful journey through familiar terrain in the regions of feminist anger and mid-life crisis. But the beguiling comedy by Willy Russell (Educating Rita) that opened on Broadway last week has three invaluable things going for it: an unflagging sense of humor; an authenticity of language and logic that keeps the central character's conversation from ever turning into stand-up comedy or sermonette; and, foremost, a hugely likable performance by Pauline Collins (Upstairs, Downstairs).

Collins is captivating as an unabashedly ordinary housewife who wants nothing more than a bit of liveliness and unpredictability but fears it's already too late. She deftly evokes a woman without a mean or malicious thought who sees everyone she knows as a disappointment. She turns the slender plot -- Shirley's sneaking off to Greece for a holiday and her temptation to stay there -- into genuine introspection. It's easy to see why Collins, who originated the role in London, last month won the Olivier Award for that portrayal. Praise belongs as well to designer Bruno Santini, who makes the kitchen so pleasant and homey that one realizes its constriction only in the second act, as Shirley sprawls on a rocky seaside outcropping beneath an azure Mediterranean sky. The visual metaphor, like the play, is obvious yet enchanting.