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 Entertainment | November 2007 
Shirley Valentine is Absolutely Superb!
 Twila Crawford - PVNN
| | Uptight and desperate, but funny, Shirley Valentine portrayed by New York actress Dana Zeller-Alexis talks to the walls, while sipping a bottle of wine, in her kitchen. | 
| | Pounding on the table, Dana Zeller-Alexis as Shirley Valentine vents about her "unused life" as she packs for her trip to Puerto Vallarta. | 
| | Shirley Valentine, portrayed by Dana Zeller-Alexis, no longer looking frumpy, after meeting Miguel on the beach in Puerto Vallarta and skinny dipping...and more...off of his boat in Banderas Bay. | 
| | This is Shirley Valentine, enacted by Dana Zeller-Alexis, waiting at a Malecon restaurant for her husband, Joe, who says he is coming "to taker her home." Think she´ll go? | 
| | Owners of their own New York theater, Mark Zeller directs his wife, Dana Zeller-Alexis in the funny and sometimes sad play, Shirley Valentine. | 
| | Fan and tourist Barbara Poyntz, who visited Greece, the setting in the original Shirley Valentine, stopped by the theater to see actress Dana Zeller-Alexis in her Puerto Vallarta role. |
Don't miss New York actress Dana Zeller-Alexis' stellar performance as a plucky, wisecracking housewife on vacation in Puerto Vallarta in "Shirley Valentine's Vallarta Adventure" Thursday nights through December 27th at Santa Barbara Theater.
Shirley Valentine is one astute (even if she may not know it), funny, sad - almost tragic - character, repressed, and finally, desperate enough to do something about it. Audience laughter is mixed with tears, especially when she talks about the "unused life."
You will never have received sex education the way Shirley Valentine explains it! While visiting in Puerto Vallarta, she does more than talk... and what an awakening for her!
Stellar New York actress, Dana Zeller-Alexis, stars in this one-woman production, based on a Tony Award-winning comedy. Her Shakespeare and Broadway-experienced husband, Mark, directs Dana. The couple co-founded and operate the 78th Street Theatre Lab in New York City.
Dana, through Shirley, reenacts her daughter, her son, her husband and her friend, Jane. She creates Shirley as such a natural, believable woman, someone we know. Director Mark Zeller explains "this is accomplished by layering of acting, with the action the last aspect to be achieved." Dana says, "This is a comic and moving journey where the audience members can examine their own responsibility to their own lives through a gale of laughter."
We first meet Shirley Valentine in the kitchen, talking to the wall and sipping a bottle of wine. She appears frumpy in her black-and-white-striped apron and dark clothing and uptight with her body movements. In talking to the wall, she opens up her emotions. We learn she was a daring but idiosyncratic child who slipped through the cracks in school. Shirley's sense of humor and searching mind carry her through life.
When offered a plane ticket to Puerto Vallarta, she wrestles with her doubts, and about her repressive and dogmatic husband, Joe, who brings out her insecurities in full force. "If the plate with food isn't ready on the table when his foot hits the home landing, he has a fit." Shirley, in talking about her husband, explains, "Once a man gets you horizontal, his behavior changes."
"I don´t hate men. I´m not a feminist," like her friend, Jane, according to Shirley, who "found her own husband in bed with the milkman." Shirley recounts finding out another friend she always wanted to be like, "is a whore, a prostitute, can you imagine?"
Shirley´s discourse on sex education is priceless. You´ll have to hear it to believe it. Finally, Shirley explains marriage. "Marriage is a lot like the Middle East... duck!" Life is "just nothing." She further says, "Joe turned into him. Shirley Valentine turned into this." And, "Why do you treat badly the one you know best?"
Then, Shirley and Jane arrive in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for their respective adventures. Jane meets someone on the plane and leaves Shirley on her own. Shirley soon meets Miguel on the beach who has a boat. They go skinny-dipping off of the boat in Banderas Bay... and more. "He kissed my stretch marks." After Shirley's explanation of her adventure, this writer will never think of Christopher Columbus or avocadoes in the usual way again!
Later, Shirley emotionally reflects, "It is a crime against God that I lived such a little life."
Shirley then begins to think about not going home. She "fell in love with living." She declares, "We're fine, we're fine. We're dead before we are fine."
Going to work in a Vallarta restaurant, Shirley´s husband tells her she "is a disgrace," and suggests the "change of life" is affecting her. Joe declares he is coming "to take her home."
Shirley waits for him on the Malecon, colorfully dressed beach-style with sunglasses and straw hat, looking forward to saying, "Hello? I used to be the wife. I used to be the mother. Now I'm Shirley Valentine. Would you care to join me for a drink?"
With sterling qualifications, Dana Zeller-Alexis has acted off-Broadway and in touring companies. She has taught voice and acting at New York University School of the Arts and other universities. She has studied with the best, including Uta Hagen, who was the original Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on Broadway. Dana received a Ford scholarship and a Rockefeller Foundation grant for theater studies.
Don't miss "Shirley Valentine's Vallarta Adventure" every Thursday night through December 27th at Santa Barbara Theater. Advance tickets can be purchased online at SantaBarbaraTheater.com. For more information stop by the theater at 351 Olas Altas on the South Side of Puerto Vallarta or call (322) 223-2048.
 An award-winning journalist, Twila Crawford lives in Puerto Vallarta, where, in addition to contributing articles to the Vallarta Tribune and other local and international publications, she writes Out and About in Puerto Vallarta, a weekly column that offers inside information about who, what, why, where and when it's happening around Banderas Bay.
Click HERE to read more of Twila's "Out and About" articles |
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