Gossip

Marks & Spencer Back Calendar Girls Stage Play???

The Daily Mail has reported that high street store, Marks & Spencer, may be looking to back a “comedy drama with music” adaptation of the hit 2003 film Calendar Girls, which starred Julie Walters and Helen Mirren. Early talks are reportedly in progress with Twiggy, Sue Johnston, Lynda Bellingham, Wendy Craig, Sharon Maughan, Lorraine Ashbourne, Amanda Redman, Jenny Agutter, Stella Gonet, Anna Chancellor and Miranda Richardson to star in the stage version, but no casting details have as yet been confirmed.

Producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, who were responsible for the hit West End production of Equus (which starts touring at the end of January), are joining forces with Disney, who back Harbour Pictures – the company which produced the film, to see the new play go from its first draft, by Tim Firth, to a full scale production to be launched at the Chichester Festival Theatre later this year. From there, the production will tour and, if it does well, will transfer to the West End. Matthew Warchus is attached to direct.

So why has Marks & Spencer become interested in backing the adaptation? Well in the film, one of the WI members produces a prize-winning home-made Victoria sponge when really she’d gone out and bought it from the nearest Marks & Sparks! No doubt that this scene will definitely end up in the stage script, which explains why the company might come on board.