Shirley Valentine (film) to retain the best of Willy Russell's theatrical devices . . . while opening out the action to embrace a big-screen atmosphere. The supporting cast, particularly Bernard Hill as Collins's Neanderthal husband, is equally convincing, with only the hammy Conti (glistening teeth and appalling accent) striking a momentary false note." Among reviewers who found the film banal and hollow, Caryn James of "The New York Times" observed, "By adding all the characters and settings that Shirley only talks about on stage, the film reveals the weakness of Mr. Russell's script as surely as if a magician's clumsy assistant had pointed
The Brothers (Shirley play) King's Men. Some scholars have assumed that Shirley wrote for the King's Men only in the final phase of his career, in 1640–42; but this is by no means a certainty. Shirley's long and productive connection with Queen Henrietta's Men dominated most of his career, though he wrote "Love in a Maze" for the King's Revels Men in 1632. The eccentric nineteenth-century critic F. G. Fleay originated the argument that the play that was published as "The Brothers" in 1653 is a revision of an otherwise-unknown play by Shirley titled "The Politic Father," which was licensed by the Master of