Going to see Shirley Valetine's Gone to Greece is a VACATION

I love theater! Always have and always will.  I learned at an early age - my budding writer years during elementary school- that I loved to write plays and to see them.

Never was in teh cast and never wanted to be.  Give me a pen/paper or audience chair and I'm in performance heaven.

What I love most about theater is the ability it provides me with to suspect my everyday life and to live in someone else's world; often a world of times and places I may not otherwise every experience.

With that in mind I went last Friday night to see Shirley Valentine's Gone to Greece at the Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma.  It was opening night and the place was packed! Apparently people either already knew the one-woman show written by Willy Russell or they knew of Actress Mary Gannon Graham. I knew about neither of them but thought, especially after I interviewed the actress for an earlier blog, that I'd give the play a shot.

Besides, I needed a break; a mini-vacation that didn't cost much but would produce a fair amount of what a vacation is designed to provide. It couldn't break the bank and it wouldn't require a great deal of my time.

Like so many of us, Shirley Valentine had gotten into a routine in her life that was robotic. Steak on Thursday, Eggs on Friday, etc. Opportunities like vacations were for other people; those who lived to the fullest because they knew how important it was to be ‘alive’.

 Graham’s portrayal of Shirley -a middle-class British housewife - was more than believable. Speaking to the wall she lamented her situation. How had it happened that she has ended up not being who she is? Her thoughts and feelings were punctuated by her domestic duties. Well, someone had to cook the chips!

From my seat in the theater I could hear the potatoes sizzling in the oil on the stove and could feel the weight of disappointments and honest self-evaluations that Graham delivered at my feet.  She made Shirley’s journey mine in the way she shared intimate details and secret longings; the kind everyone in the audience must've had at one time or another.

 At one point Graham had me caring so much about Shirley Valentine that I became her. I was the one going to Greece. Through well-timed laughter and relief I did leave the shores of my own world and stepped onto the sandy shores of the  blue Adriatic.

Graham took both me and my friend Cookie on a fun-loving but very poignant vacation. The kind neither one of us have even been on before. When the play ended I felt invigorated and alive. Without leaving the theater chair I had taken a much-needed trip; finding myself as happy as Shirley Valentine to be alive.

Cookie felt the same way. In fact on the drive back to Rohnert Park we laughed again at some of our favorite lines and about what vacation meant to each of us. It was a really hopeful and truthful conversation among friends.

I encourage others to see the show.  Graham is a very talented actress whose interpretation of Shirley Valentine - now through June 12 - will remain one of the most vicarious vacations I've ever taken.