Shirley Valentine 42-year-old put-upon mother & housewife leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband packs her bags & heads for the sun. The note on the kitchen table reads Gone to Greece back in two weeks." " It is a simple & brilliant idea...the profound & perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone
- in a pub on a beach in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual & social identity. The play is not only funny it is also moving." (Michael Coveney Financial Times) One for the Road "starts...with the mid-life hero torn between the security of married life in a dormer bungalow on a northern housing estate & dreams of being a rucksacked super-tramp. Mr Russell writes with knowledgeable venom about a world where Beethoven Underpass leads to Wagner Walkway & where anyone who doesn't join Weight Watchers or the Ramblers Club is regarded as a social deviant." (Francis King Sunday Telegraph)"