Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad. Wondering what has happened to her youth and feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley finds herself regularly alone and talking to the wall while preparing an evening meal of egg and chips for her emotionally distant husband. When her best friend offers to pay for a trip-for-two to Greece, she packs her bags, leaves a note on the cupboard door in the kitchen,
Educating Rita (film) relationship"; he said Russell's screen adaptation "added mistresses, colleagues, husbands, in-laws, students and a faculty committee, [that were] all unnecessary" and said the playwright/screenwriter "start[ed] with an idealistic, challenging idea, and then cynically tr[ied] to broaden its appeal". In 1999, the film was among the BFI Top 100 British films. In 2007, while promoting the remake of "Sleuth", Caine called "Educating Rita" "the last good picture [he] made before [he] mentally retired." The film was released on DVD in the UK and the US. ITV Studios released the film onto Blu Ray in the UK (Region B) in 2008 as