'Calender Girls' theatre review - Nowt2Do.Com: Listings and Reviews for Bristol and Beyond!


	You know the story, everyone knows the story don’t they, how Villagers of Cracoe in Yorkshire were shocked to discover that John Baker, an apparently fit and healthy 53 year-old “who’d never had a day’s illness in his life” according to his wife, Angela, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in February 1998. Angela’s WI friends rallied round, offered support and help. In a bid to raise funds to buy a sofa for the local cancer unit, somewhere comfy for the relatives to sit, they hit upon the idea of a calendar. That is when the ordinary members of a Yorkshire WI became extraordinary ladies, sparking a global phenomenon by persuading one another to pose near naked, sorry nude. The rest is history. First it was the calendar, then the film and now the stage play. By all accounts this production is the fastest-selling tour in UK theatre history, selling more like a hit musical than a play. The promise of nude women might be enough to draw some but what draws the many is the uplifting, inspiring story that is quirky, poignant, hilarious and true. Tim Firth did a fine job with the screenplay for the movie, and he’s done an equally good, if slightly different, job here. The actresses here are all faces you’ll recognise from films and TV; The Slipper and the Rose, Only Fools and Horses, Neighbours, Eastenders, Groundforce. All work together in perfect - hang on…back up…Groundforce? Ground force with Alan T and Tommy? Yup. Charlie Dimmock makes her stage debut as Celia. Well I never did. Turns out she’s kind of sort of okay-ish and proves yet again a bra is superfluous to requirements. If you’re looking for stand out performances look to Gemma Craven as Chris, Sue Holderness as Annie and Hannah Waterman as Ruth. Anne Charleston and Letitia Dean make the most of their roles. The great thing is, they all have lots of character to work with, no two-dimension ciphers here – real women, Yorkshire women, salt of the Earth, tell-it-as- it-is women, who we know will bare all for the calendar. The photo shoot comes at the end of the first act and there is much anticipation. How will this be achieved, what will be on show? On film the shooting of the calendar was tastefully amusing, here on stage it carries a little more danger and electricity. A film camera shoots from one angle, every bun and cup, carefully positioned to preserve modesty and illicit a smile. On stage the audience watches from all angles so where is the optimum place for the position of the Chelsea bun or the teapot? The whole thing is handled with much decorum and much hilarity. The second half delves into the aftermath of the shoot and although this is the weakest part of the story there is still much for our ladies to get their teeth into. Chris (Gemma Craven) gets carried away with the whole enterprise and views it as a launch pad to greater fame, Annie (Sue Holderness) sees it very differently. In a moving moment she tells Chris she’d give up every penny raised to see her John for just one more hour. The real Angela sums up the extraordinary story of the Calendar Girls thus: “I think that we’ve all coped really well with what has happened. We’ve done the most amazing things but we’ve kept our feet on the ground and we’ve never forgotten why we did what we did. We didn’t do the calendar because we wanted to be famous but because we wanted to raise money in John’s memory. It has been the most marvellous experience.” The play is a simply marvellous experience too.