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Years still shine on Yorkshire lasses
Note the fine patina on the piano: Cora, Jennifer Elison. leads the Calendar Girls in a sing thong The
Calendar Girls
Wolverhampton Grand **** YOU can't beat a bit of flesh for selling
tickets and in Calendar Girls there is ample flesh on display hence lots
of bums on seats – and on stage if it comes to that. But it is not just the promise of a glimpse
of the rather more mature derrieres and other voluptuous bits which
packs them in, after all many of the audience are women, but a
feel-good, warm hearted play based on a remarkable true story. The story has a sad beginning, the death of Annie
Baker's husband John, a Yorkshire Dales National Parks Officer, from
non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of 54 in 1998. The ladies of Rylstone & District Women's Institute* decided to do something in his memory with the modest ambition of raising £500 for a new settee in the visitor room at the hospital where John had been treated. Tricia Stewart, Chris in the
film and play, had already raised the idea of an alternative nude
calendar while John had been dying, which cheered him up but he said
they would never do it. How wrong he was. The Alternative WI calendar
raised its £500 in its first few days and to date with reissues and
merchandise has raised more than £3 million and still
funds lymphoma and leukaemia research including new laboratories at the
University of Leeds – oh, and it bought a new
settee. The play is based on the film
which in turn was inspired by the true story but with names and
details changed for dramatic effect.. Driving force for the calendar
and the group is Chris, played with drive, humour and humanity by Lynda
Bellingham. She is on stage a lot - and we see
a lot of her and the bits, or rather lots, we see are defying age rather
nicely. Her best friend is Annie, played touchingly by Jan Harvey. There are moments in her performance when lumps appear in throats.
Celia, Rula Lenska, adds a bit
of glamour as well as that honeyed
husky voice while for down to earth, no nonsense Yorkshire humour you
can't beat retired teacher Jessie, June Watson, who shows some wonderful
comic timing. Also among the great undressed
we have the ample form of Ruth, Debbie Chazen, flying the flag for
larger ladies everywhere and young, single mum, daughter of the vicar
and church organist Cora, although cor might be a suitable alternative
for Jennifer Elison. John Labanowski is the token
husband Rod, the full of life other half of
Chris while Joe McGann is a believable John – although he could do with
a more convincing wig at the start. His death is cleverly done.
One minute he is there the next he is gone. Indeed the direction
by Jack Ryder on a simple effective set design from Robert Jones has
some nice touches, for example letters of support and comfort fluttering
down from the flies – letters delivered from heaven are
much more effective than someone walking in
dragging a mail bag. The set is a simple floor in a
village hall which can change in a few moments to a hill – John's hill –
on the Dales and, in the moving, final scene, into a field of
sunflowers, the symbol of the whole Calendar Girls enterprise. In the play, if not in real
life, the calendar is being done in secret without approval by the WI
chairwoman Marie, Ruth Madoc, who received a cheer when she first
entered – something I find quite strange from an audience watching a
play.
Chris gets it as well from
Annie in another clash of personalities and motives
with both disagreements added for their
dramatic effect with neither having any
basis in real life.
Indeed a clash between the
Calendar Girls with the national WI, seen in the play, never happened
with the National body behind the women from the start. But first the film and
then the play never set out to be a documentary. It
is a play and as play it works and works well.
You feel for Annie, you are ready to cheer for the women and you
celebrate their eventual triumph. It is all gentle, genial stuff and you
come out into the cold, wet might with a warm glow of happiness. The original Calendar Girls
were a bunch of ordinary middle aged lasses in the Dales who achieved
the extraordinary and this is a fitting tribute even if it can
never match their inspiring,
real life story. To
29-10-11 Roger
Clarke The
Original 11 Calendar girls split over a disagreement over film
rights
and which film maker they were to choose and only six sold the rights to
their stories. In the updated calendar released in 2010 only those six
of the original group took part. * Rylstone
lies between Skipton and Grassington in the
Dales for those who don't know their Yorkshire . . . Skipton's just
north west of Keighley . . . that's just north west of Bingley . . .
just up the road from Bradford . . . which is a bus ride from Leeds.
Wharfedale is the local rugby club if that helps.
Meanwhile
at the end of the month . . . ****
THEY'RE back, baring all - well not quite all - for the last time as the
professional show makes its final tour, revealing how a group of
ordinary women posed for a cheeky calendar to raise cash for charity. The play becomes available for
amateur companies next September, which should create some excitement
amongst Midland drama groups, and it is a real money spinner in more
ways than one. Since the original Calendar
Girls at a Yorkshire Women's Institute bravely stripped to raise £500
for a hospital settee and ended up with half a million to build a new
cancer treatment wing, the project has brought in £3 million. A large opening night audience
at the Grand - as usual more than 90 per cent women - proved the show
can still pull them in, eight years after the hit film was launched. The cast of the current
production comprises mainly mature women of varying shapes and
sizes, and the undoubted star of the show is Lynda Bellingham, playing
Chris, who has the idea for the special calendar, instead of one showing
local scenes or churches, when fellow WI member Annie loses her husband,
John to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma Lynda shows more than most as
she reveals a very impressive figure and super legs, and the top scene
shows how the women use buns, with cherries on top, flowers, crockery
and even balls of knitting wool as items of minimum cover at the photo
shoot. It's funny and emotional.
Inevitably the action dips a little after the hilarious strip, but the
audience loved it. To 29.10.11
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