CALENDAR GIRLS: Firth, Theatre Royal Nottingham till 14 February, then touring
Nottingham/Touring.
CALENDAR GIRLS: Tim Firth.
Theatre Royal: Tkts 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk.
Runs: 2h 25m: one interval: till 14th Feb.
Performance times: 7.30pm, matinees 2.00pm Weds and 2.30pm Sat.
Review: Alan Geary: 9th February 2009.
Drips with bargain basement sentimentality. The audience loved it.
It can’t be anything to do with the temperatures we’ve been treated to lately, but this is the third of three consecutive shows involving nudity to come to Nottingham in a fortnight. It’s the least demanding.
From Tim Firth, it’s a fairly close adaptation of his successful screenplay. But, presumably to allow for closer exploration of character, it concentrates on seven of the calendar girls instead of all twelve.
In many respects, it’s an extended TV sitcom, with stock entrances, pauses for applause, and a lot of declaiming of one-liners at the audience. Brigit Forsyth (Marie), for instance, plays precisely the same snobbish and pretentious character she did in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? decades ago. If memory serves well, she even has the same hair-do.
There are some fine actors lined up, clearly, but no one’s really required to demonstrate the fact.
Done on a hybrid Women’s Institute hall/Yorkshire Dales set, it’s a celebration of Yorkshire but, more importantly, it’s about ordinary people standing up and taking command of their own lives. There’s a lot of Brassed Off and The Full Monty about it, even The Vagina Monologues.
It’s also a lot of the time, what with the sunflowers and the leukaemia, dripping with bargain basement sentimentality. When the first of a shower of letters of appreciation falls from the sky you have a ghastly feeling that it’s from Annie’s dead hubby John in heaven.
That said, it is occasionally fairly moving. Jessie (Siân Phillips) makes a penetrating little speech about old age, as does Chris (Lynda Bellingham) on her hatred of the traditional plum jam, “kinder, küche und kirche” image of the WI.
After the interval squabbling and recriminations break out and we get under the skins of some of the characters; there’s even a four-letter word from the hitherto mousy Ruth (Julia Hills). But at the very end it turns out to have been a non-meaty, feel-good evening.
The audience loved it.
Cora: Elaine C Smith.
Chris: Linda Bellingham.
Annie: Patricia Hodge.
Jessie: Siân Phillips.
Celia: Gaynor Faye.
Ruth: Julia Hills.
Marie: Brigit Forsyth.
Brenda Hulse/Lady Cravenshire: Joan Blackham.
John: Gary Lilburn.
Rod: Gerard McDermott.
Lawrence/Liam: Carl Prokopp.
Louise/Elaine: Abby Francis.
Director: Hamish McColl.
Designer: Robert Jones.
Lighting Designer: Malcolm Rippeth.
Sound Designer: John Leonard.
Costume Designer: Emma Williams.
Composer and Music Arrangement: Steve Parry.
2009-02-10 21:04:37