‘I Spread Love and Misery’: Simon Callow on directing Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine | stage

pOlin Collins was a unique phenomenon: a brilliant light comedian – as she described herself – who was unerringly able to reach emotional depths that reduced even the most hardened of audiences to tears. She did it extravagantly, of course, in Willie Russell’s Shirley Valentine, a one-woman play in which she directed on the West End and Broadway. This performance was so natural, so deftly balanced between innate impudence and the devastating awareness that her life was about to pass, that many people assumed it was easy.

On the contrary: I found it very difficult. Although she knew the play was a masterpiece, the prospect of performing it filled her with fear. The exercises were far from easy. The play is essentially a comedic monologue and requires very special skills that not all actors possess. The poor woman was forced to come to training every day and tell a new joke – torture to her, second nature to Shirley. Then there was the matter of convincing her to credibly cook eggs and chips while telling her life story. I knew she had to get all of that—the jokes and the potato chips—into her bones before she could stand before us as a three-dimensional person telling us profound truths about her life and the lives of millions of other women, while she prepared the evening meal. As she struggled, Willie Russell began to have doubts about her choice. “She’ll be fine, but she won’t be Shirley,” he said.

In the first preview, the stage lights suddenly went out after three minutes. From the darkness came Shirley Valentine’s voice: “Hey! What’s going on? You’ve paid my electric bills, so far.” Huge laughter from the audience who realized that she was improvising, something she had been afraid of throughout her acting life. Willie grabbed my arm in the dark and whispered urgently: “I’ve got it. This is pure Shirley. There’s nothing to worry about.”

In life, she was irresistible: sweet, outrageous, sexy, loving, and wickedly funny. We first met when I was cast opposite her in Bernard Slade’s romantic comedy. The manager invited us to dinner. “So, you’re a cheater, huh?” She said before I sat down. I admitted that I was. “Good, right,” she said lightly. “I got that out of the way.”

In both London and New York, she spread love and naughtiness all over the stage. Every day was a party. Even those stubborn old crews backstage on Broadway adored it. A few triumphant months later, she left the New York production in a haze of emotion, her Tony Award in her luggage. Days later, after her successor took charge, the atmosphere behind the scenes and in front of the house had completely changed, now becoming businesslike and impersonal again.

Its scope was enormous, much larger than she had ever admitted. She directed her again in Shadows, a wonderful new play by Sharman Macdonald in which she plays a woman whose husband dies young, leaving her in charge of their son, who does everything in his power to keep her from committing to another man. It was a painful and complicated relationship that she played with devastating honesty, winning acclaim from critics and audiences.

But for reasons I didn’t fully understand, I hated doing it. So there was no point now in me trying to convince her to play the lead in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock or Willy Loman’s wife, Linda, in Death of a Salesman. No matter: what she did as Shirley and on screen in countless witty and brilliant performances was gift enough. What she brought to those of us who knew her privately, as well as to her fans, remains an indelible memory.