Theatre News

Calendar Girls Make a Date at Palace, 21 Feb

North West audiences will have another chance to see the stage version of Calendar Girls in the flesh, this time at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, following recent runs in Liverpool and Salford. This is the final UK tour and the Palace date is for one week only.

The latest touring cast features Lynda Bellingham, Jennifer Ellison, Trudie Goodwin, Ruth Madoc, Bernie Nolan, Lisa Riley, Gwen Taylor, Diana Moran, Bruno Langley, Joe McGann and Danielle Lineker making her stage debut.

The plot follows a group of extraordinary women, members of a very ordinary Yorkshire WI, persuade one another to pose for a charity calendar with a difference! Puzzling their husbands, mortifying their children and riding the wrath of an outraged WI, they inadvertently spark a global phenomenon. As interest in the calendar snowballs, the ladies find themselves revealing more than they had ever planned.

Tim Firth has adapted the screenplay of his smash hit Miramax film for the stage. The film was released in 2003 and was an instant hit at the box office, becoming the number one grossing film in the UK on its release. Tim’s other credits include the films Blackball and Kinky Boots and the award winning Preston Front for the BBC. His theatre credits include the plays Neville’s Island, The Safari Party, The Flint Street Nativity and the Olivier Award winning musical, which played at the Lowry a year ago; Our House.

Calendar Girls is directed by Olivier Award winner Hamish McColl. Hamish is probably best known as half of the double act The right size, who from 1988 created a unique style of comic theatre culminating in the smash hit The Play What I Wrote which won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment. Other credits include Hysterium in Edward Hall’s production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the National Theatre.

Calendar Girls returns with a run at the Palace Theatre from 21 – 26 February 2011.