Main Street Theater Works brought dinner theater to local audiences last season with a highly acclaimed "Driving Miss Daisy" and is back in the same venue this time with an irresistible "Shirley Valentine." The frequently hilarious and persistently touching British comedy features the equally irresistible Lee Marie Kelly. Her unerring and spirited performance as a forty-ish housewife with a yearning for life beyond a Liverpool kitchen won a standing a ovation at the end of the two-hour, one-woman show at Daffodils in Sutter Creek.

Written by Willy Russell in the 1980s, "Shirley Valentine" won a cluster of Broadway and film awards and its brilliance has not been dimmed by a couple of decades. It takes an empathetic audience - through Shirley (Alexander) Bradshaw's eyes - from the gritty London port city, where she confides with her kitchen wall, to a sandy vacation beach on a Greek island .

As she prepares dinner for husband Joe (it must be on the table at the precise moment he walks in the door), she massages her discontent with sips of Riesling and wonders what's happened to the woman who once was teenage rebel Shirley Alexander.

She was not much of a student but remembers one triumph as the only member of the class who could answer "what was man's greatest invention?" She knew it was the wheel, because her father was addicted to the Encyclopedia Britannica and let his family know it.

As Shirley Alexander, there were dreams of travel, "maybe being a courier." As Mrs. Bradshaw, there was not much travel. Joe suffers severe culture shock even on a short trip to Chester in Wales.

Not much romance, either, we learn. Shirley thinks she missed being a member of the generation "that discovered the clitoris." She used to mispronounce it cliTORis, she reveals. When she asked Joe what he knew about it, he told her "it doesn't run as well as the Ford Cortina."

Shirley ponders over what happened to the marriage and confesses "I don't know." She is proud of son Bryan and daughter Millandra. She has a tender memory of laughing and splashing paint on each other when she and Joe were painting the kitchen years ago and sharing the bath tub when they scrubbed off.

That was at odds with her unhappy memory of Joe's recent tantrum over being served eggs for dinner and tossing them at her as they sat at the table. As for her trip to Greece? Absolutely not.

Shirley Alexander's yearnings began tugging at Shirley Bradshaw when the opportunity came to travel to a Greek island with her friend Jane, who offered to pay the expenses. There is a fine moment when Shirley, defiant of Joe, sits on her suitcase waiting to be picked up, opening her handbag over and over and taking out "passport, tickets, money, passportticketsmoney."

The second act finds Shirley in Greece, briefly chatting with the white rocks beside her table and chair at the beach and announcing that Jane had "met a fellow on the plane, went to dinner with him and didn't come back to the hotel for four nights."

Shirley reports to the audience on a romantic episode of her own, a cruise and a nude swim with her date, Costa. Jane, she says, disapproved. Vacation over, it is time to return.

But who will decide - Shirley Alexander or Shirley Bradshaw?

Do not be turned off by the prospect of a one-person performance, as some are. Kelly's skill and sympathy shine in every way. She is very, very funny, sharply analytical, roguish, regretful and vulnerable. It is a virtuoso performance with never the whisper of a letdown.

There were some concerns by audience members that Shirley's Liverpudlian accent tended to swallow up some words until there was time to adjust to a rhythm of speech and expression. Exercise concentration.

The program tells us Kelly earned her BFA in drama at University of Arizona and working in dinner threatres and summer stock in Colorado and Arizona. She has been performing in various local theatres for 16 years and has been nominated for awards in several. This is her third production for MSTW and has appeared in Communicating Doors and Much Ado About Nothing at the Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre.

Ron Adams' skilled direction is sensitive to nuances and to the comedy highs and universal messages that pop out in this fast-paced comedy. The kitchen set designed by Susan Mc Candless serves efficiently, right down to a steaming teapot. The Greek island beach is a spare but appropriate foil for a vacationing Shirley in shades and slim pants.

"Shirley Valentine" continues Friday and Saturday at Daffodils at 6 p.m. through Oct. 23 and on Thursday, Oct. 28 and Friday, Oct. 29. Sunday afternoon luncheon performances are scheduled Oct. 10, 17 and 24 at noon.

Tickets are $40 for dinner shows, $31 for matinees and include the show, dinner or luncheon, tax and tip. Reservations may be made at MSTW's box office number, (888) 243-6789.