Samantha Dodd, an amazing actress, played Shirley Valentine so well in Viva’s production, that it was hard to separate the two.

She held the audience transfixed for the whole evening, entertaining us with hilarious anecdotes of her life, her fears, her weaknesses, and her antics.

She delivered the witty script by Willy Russell with panache and an attractive accent, clearly telling us the many one-liners that had us all laughing in recognition or thinking.

We were with Shirley all the way.

After admitting that she was frightened of life beyond the wall, would she be brave and break out of her mundane life in Liverpool to have a holiday in Greece? We were delighted when she did.

Samantha varied her voice greatly, giving it light and shade, pausing for thought or talking quickly and excitedly to tell a story that had us in fits of laughter.

She managed this while carrying on with the mundane life she despised, working in the kitchen, plonking herself down every now and then on a kitchen chair to tell us a tale, or talking to the wall, making an egg and chips dinner for her husband having given the meat he was expecting to a visiting dog.

One of her delightful tales was of ‘our Brian’ who was acting as Joseph during the school play and who refused to accept the innkeeper’s statement that there was no room at the inn.

There was also the posh girl from her class in school whom she met again and who turned out to be a hooker and there was ‘her’ from next door who believed Shirley when she shouted from her window that she was going off the have an affair.

After years of denigrating Shirley, ‘her next-door’ believed that she finally saw something to admire in Shirley, giving her a silk gown, that she had never had the courage to use.

Samantha brought all the other characters to life in her unique way, too – her friend she was supposed to go to Greece with, her husband, who had his own set ways and mannerisms, and her Christopher Columbus (Costa) who showed her a new way of life in Greece where she fell in love with the idea of living.

She drew these characters so well that we had no need to see them, we could imagine them clearly in our mind’s eye.

What a wonderful production this was, with Samantha delivering all 16000 words without hesitation, confidently and charismatically, - we were hooked.

We left the theatre with her words ringing in our ears, reassessing our own lives: Do we, too, ‘do what we have to do and pretend that’s what we want to do?’ Do most of us ‘die before we are dead’?

This is life-changing stuff - all due to the excellence of this production. Congratulations to Samantha, the director Gail Baker and all involved.