Written by Willy Russell as a stage play in 1983. Shirley Valentine was filmed in 1986 with Pauline Collins as the Liverpudlian housewife who breaks away. I last saw it staged at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2010 with Meera Syal as Shirley in a double bill with Willy Russell’s Educating Rita.

Now Sheridan Smith takes on the monologue play which at two hours and ten minutes including the interval is a singular celebration of the art of a Scouse raconteur, full of wit and self reflection on her life, which she later describes as “little”.

Shirley, maiden name Valentine, is 42 and married to Joe Bradshaw (but she’s not yet a Carrie Bradshaw type). On this Thursday night he won’t be getting the usual mince supper but egg and chips because his wife has given the mince to her employers Tabitha and Jonty’s bloodhound, who is only allowed a vegetarian diet.

Shirley’s powers of observation are served up in conversation with the Wall, a single vertical flat which shakes alarmingly as a tube train goes under St Martin’s Lane. The set is an ordinary kitchen, very neat and tidy and clean and upstairs in grey relief is the impression of a bedroom and bathroom but there is a view over the water from the window downstairs.

We hear about Shirley’s schoolfriend, her family and neighbours and learn that everyone is a lot kinder than Shirley’s rather harsh judgment of them. Her daughter Mallondra has had a row with her flatmate and moves back home for half an hour. Her son Brian has aspirations to be a Beat poet but rejects conventional poetry.