Gossip

Calendar Girls Continue Baring All On Tour???

Calender Girls, which recently announced it will relocate to another West End venue following its closure to make way for ENRON at the Noel Coward in January (See News, 21 Sep 2009), looks set to be hitting the road again from the middle of next year.

It’s believed that producers are hoping for another line-up of household names to join the touring cast, with rumours flying round that several big name soap and sitcom actresses have been inspired by their co-stars. Currently at the Noel Coward Theatre June Brown, Anita Dobson, Gemma Atkinson and Jerry Hall are baring all in the screen-to-stage adaptation (See News, 29 May 2009).

Tim Firth’s adaptation of the award-winning Miramax film Calendar Girls, for which he also wrote the screenplay, tells the real-life story of the members of a Yorkshire chapter of the Women’s Institute who decide to pose nude for a charity calendar. Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Penelope Wilton and Celia Imrie starred in the 2003 screen original, also written by Firth.

Calender Girls is produced by David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, who have arranged for the £1.50 booking fee charged on London tickets to be donated directed to Leukaemia Research. Calendar Girls is directed by The Right Size’s Hamish McColl and designed by Robert Jones, with costumes by Emma Williams, lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and music by Steve Parry.