Shirley Valentine - Duke of York's

Just taking a further look at the ATG site tonight, on various dates across the run, and there’s a lot of extra tickets that’ve been released, compared to when I was looking at the weekend and yesterday.

Looking at pricing though I think this is ATG getting ahead of the expected rave reviews, as anything half decent is now top price for most of the shows I looked at. Stalls back to row O or P (and right to each side) are all £95, and just the last couple of rows of the dress circle are £75, with the rest all at £95. There’s a few exceptions so carefully check as many dates as you can before booking.

Looks like they’re anticipating a hit and aiming for a big box office too. So well done if you booked early!

Just looked through the Reviews:

5 Stars

The Independent
The Daily Mail
Financial Times
All That Dazzles
Jonathan Baz

4 Stars

The Guardian
The Telegraph
The Times
WhatsOnStage
Time Out
The Upcoming

3 Stars

Evening Standard
The Stage
London Theatre

My understanding is that the consensus is that Sheridan Smith delivers a 5 Star performance in a 3 Star play, this delivering a 4 Star Average Review.

The low rating of the play stems from it's "dated" view of women's lives (42 is not old these days, everybody understands the clitoris now, this is a play about a woman written by a man).

In defence of the play, I would argue that even if some elements are dated, the key takeaways (Carpe Diem, Everyone has value) are not.

If we judged works by how "dated" they are, rather than what they are telling us, we'd sling Jane Austen's works on the pyre, for starters, as women don't hang around waiting for a man to save them these days. But we don't, because we are capable of reading such works through the prism of the time in which they were written, and not only learning about that time, but also extracting the valuable insights that are universal.

Same here. The dated stuff tells us how far we have come since the eighties, and allows us to see the world as it was seen then, and the timeless undercurrents remain as valuable as they ever were.

In my opinion, it would be a shame to allow the label "dated" to stiff us out of seeing a truly magnificent performance in a play that is timeless in it's thrust, even if the setting is dated.

The dynamic pricing on this is shocking. I guess the booking pages are getting lots of hits following the good reviews that’ve been published today, and despite loads of seats being raised from £75 to £95 earlier this week, they’ve gone up again - £125 now!! Even the restricted view ones at the far sides of the dress circle are up to £95 now. Unreal!

Does "everybody understands the clitoris now"? How is this even assesses lol?

99.5% of the show is her center to mid-center stage. Only rarely does she go to the extreme sides and then when she does it’s only for a brief second.

Yep, agreed with Mattnyc, she’s not at the sides a lot. If you’re going for one side or other of the auditorium, I’d err to the left (low numbers side), depending on availability of course.

Wish I had booked this when it was cheaper!

Worth checking Seatplan/Encore and the likes, managed to get a "restricted view" seat on the far side of row F stalls for next week for £30. Wasn't showing on ATG (who have the same seat on sale for other dates at £75!) From what I gather, most of the play takes place pretty centrally.

This was great! Wonderful performance by Sheridan Smith

30 pound Row D dress circle seat a bargain, completely clear view of it all!

no updated script but really didnt feel dated

I saw this last night and thought it was excellent. I can strongly recommend the £10 standing positions. I had a very clear view, better than I'm sure than most of the Upper Circle seats. It helped, as well, that there were only three of us standing last night and the other two were at the other side (you're in front of the two shorter back rows, which divide the space). Plus, it's a short show, and you're in prime position for a bar seat during the interval.

I've never seen Shirley Valentine before, but it is perfectly structured and very witty. You get a perfect view of the cooking, as well. I wonder who gets to eat the results every night?

I don't think I've ever found a production of Shirley Valentine lacking, but this was a particularly lovely marriage of material and actor. This is one of those plays that I think of as "comfort food," and I'd love to see a theatre run with a rotating cast of delightful gentle divas taking on the role.