Calendar Girls Move House, Make Way for ENRON

Calendar Girls has posted closing notices at the West End’s Noel Coward Theatre, where it makes way for the transfer of Rupert Goold’s production of Lucy Prebble’s corporate fraud drama ENRON (See Today’s Other News).

First seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre in September 2008, the stage adaptation of the hit 2003 film broke box office records on tour before transferring on 4 April 2009 to the Noel Coward, where it has also broken records with takings of well over £190,000 gross per week. After numerous extensions, it is now scheduled to close on 9 January 2010 at the Noel Coward, with plans to move to another West End playhouse due to be announced imminently.

Calendar Girls’ current cast – the production’s second – took over on 28 July 2009 and have extended their contracts by a fortnight to 30 October 2009. No further casting has yet been announced. The stellar ensemble features Jerry Hall, Anita Dobson, Jill Baker, Jill Halfpenny, Gemma Atkinson, Sara Crowe and June Brown.

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.

Calendar 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.