Shirley Bradshaw (née Valentine), a 46-year-old empty nester from Liverpool, spends her time talking to the kitchen wall while fixing dinner for her husband Joe, of whom she says, “I’m not sayin’ he’s bad, but he’s no bleedin’ good.”

But, like so many similar women, she’s still with him.

“I always said I’d leave him when the kids were grown,” she says, “but by that time, there was nowhere to go.”

Shirley is right: It’s not that he’s mean or beats her; it’s the suffocating sameness of his routine that she’s had to adopt that is sucking the life out of her. She wistfully wonders what happened to the person that was – the gutsy, risk-taking Shirley Valentine of her youth.

Besides the wall, Shirley has one good friend to confide in: Jane the-divorced-feminist, who one day offers to pay Shirley’s way for a two-week holiday in Greece. Giddy with anticipation yet fearful of her husband’s response, Shirley ponders what to do.

Rosina Reynolds, a local if not yet national thespian treasure, gives the redoubtable Shirley a wonderfully nuanced interpretation of Shirley Valentine at 6th@Penn Theatre in Hillcrest. The show, a Renaissance Theatre Company production well directed by George Flint, will move to North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach in June.

Holding the stage for two hours is a task not many actors can pull off. But the veteran Reynolds, remembered for Eleanor, a full-length monologue on Eleanor Roosevelt which she also wrote, seems to do it effortlessly. Reynolds delivers this brilliantly written two-hour monologue in storyteller style, speaking directly to the audience (when not addressing the wall) and holding nothing back. From cheeky humor to sadness and anger, Reynolds rides the emotional roller coaster with style. And she’ll break your heart when she observes sadly, “I’ve lived such a little life.”

The play was rewritten and produced for the screen in 1989, starring Pauline Collins. The film is a sweet little piece about two middle-aged ladies going off on a Greek holiday. It’s very scenic, but all those extra characters detract from the real landscape, which is the heart and soul of one woman.

The play script is an absolute wonder, the more so because the playwright is Willy Russell. Call me sexist, but the question still niggles: How could any mere man get so deep inside the mind and emotions of this woman? Is it possible that we’re really not so different as we think?

Shirley Valentine plays at 6th@Penn Theater through June 6. Shows are Thursday-Saturday, 8:00 p.m., and Sundays 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. For tickets call (610) 688-9210. The show moves to North Coast Repertory Theatre June 10-13. Call (888) 776-6278.

If “life upon the wicked stage ain’t ever what a girl supposes,” it isn’t exactly what young thespian John (Francis Gercke) had in mind, either.

In the North Coast Rep’s production of David Mamet’s 1977 parody A Life in the Theatre, we follow two actors named Robert (Jonathan McMurtry) and John over several years, as Robert’s star declines and John’s rises. John finds himself sharing the stage and a backstage makeup table with old veteran Robert who can throw a withering look or imperiously demand the youngster stay out of his way onstage with the best of them. Robert also plays passive/aggressive power games like commandeering the sole box of tissues and placing it out of John’s reach.

What do actors talk about backstage? Themselves, of course, and scenes that did or didn’t go well. One night John has the audacity to suggest that Robert seemed a bit “brittle” in one scene. Robert wastes no time blaming it on an actress who supposedly ruined the scene with her “mugging. I want to kill that cunt. She would make anyone brittle.”

A Life in the Theatre will keep you in stitches with its hilarious catalog of some of the things that can go wrong onstage – windows that don’t stay closed, lighters that don’t light, phones that don’t ring, wigs that fall off in mid-speech. One of the more endearing occurs when Robert’s zipper gets stuck moments before his cue; he goes onstage with a giant safety pin.

But it also will remind you, poignantly, that what goes up must come down, especially in the acting game.

This play, directed by David Ellenstein, may be a tad offputting to any not familiar with Mametspeak. Mamet has a speech pattern somewhat similar to Beckett in its use of repetition. Those who have seen Mamet’s plays over the

years (Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Oleanna) will feel they are meeting an old friend, but the TV generation may find the technique at least occasionally annoying.

McMurtry is perfect for this role, not least because his status as a local theater icon lends a recognition factor that serves the script well. Gercke, artistic director of Carlsbad’s New Village Arts, plays John with the right combination of professional awe and youthful confidence that grows over the 90 minutes of the play, until his appropriation of the tissue box signals the passing of the torch.

Gercke has recently been seen at the Rep in Proof and in Orphans and Still Life at New Village Arts.

A Life in the Theatre plays through June 6 at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Show times are Thursday – Saturday, at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. Call (858) 481-1055 or toll-free (888) 776-6278 for information.