Put this musical in your calendar
Calendar Girls Bord Gáis Theatre, until Feb 2
There’s no opportunity for prurient peepers on a sleazy look-out for butts and boobs from this show about a group of middle-aged women from a small Yorkshire village who produced a Pirelli-style nude calendar for charity in 1998. It’s a great human story about raising money for a good cause, overcoming public disapproval and their own natural aversion to nudity.
The money was to provide a settee for a local hospital in memory of one of the husbands who died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The courage of those women who risked offending husbands and the Women’s Institute, gave the calendar a world-wide fame that has earned millions for the Bloodwise research fund, without the women degrading themselves.
And that courage extends to the performers in this musical version of the 2003 film and the later stage show. The show-itall sequence when the photos are taken is a fabulous piece of comic stage choreography. The whooping and applause that erupted is an acknowledgement that, despite all the sex available on screens, stripping down in front of a huge audience still takes guts.
Up till then, this version, with songs by Gary Barlow, had been a hit-and-miss affair. Some of the songs act as a kind of narrative, although at times the inevitability of another overlong dirge became tedious, but the final rapid-fire presentation of brilliantly disguised naughty bits, hidden behind cakes, buns and strategic plants brought the house down.
In the original stage show the photo sequence was shown at the end of the first half, leaving the second half out on a limb. Putting it as a rousing finale delivers greater theatrical punch.
There’s a splendid chorus at the beginning extolling the virtues of Yorkshire, sung by the whole cast. Rather a lot is made of the WI’s reputation for baking, making jam and singing Jerusalem, but the introduction of a teenage love interest adds nothing worthwhile.
The classy cast of mature women represents different classes, ages and personalities, all with the knack of getting the best out of bawdy repartee between themselves and disapproving husbands. Rebecca Storm gives a star performance as Chris, the feisty campaigner with a wicked tongue who has the job of overcoming the reluctance of the others to risk their reputations, and Ruth Madoc shows how to dominate a stage at the right moment. The recently widowed Annie, (Anna-Jane Casey) is lumbered with a few songs that drag out the grief excessively, especially Kilimanjaro, but the final scenes are genuinely moving. And the strip-off is almost therapeutic for some of the reluctant strippers.
The first half was inclined to meander in places. The simple set with only a single moving part seemed to leave characters stranded in the wild, and the direction at times was pedestrian, but whenever individual performers got a worthwhile opportunity they grabbed it with gusto. The songs Who Wants A Silent Night, Dare and Sunflowers Of Yorkshire have staying power, and Mrs Conventional is a witty if unkind stereotype of the Women’s Institute.
On opening night, due to illness, Fern Britton was replaced as Marie by Nikki Gerrard.