Calendar Girls ‘Farewell’ Tour Comes To The Hippodrome”

Calendar Girls has become the most successful play ever to tour the United Kingdom and has taken more at the box office than the original film with ticket sales in excess of £21 million. Award winning producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers have announced that 2011 will be the final tour before the amateur rights are released in 2012.

As part of the final tour, Calendar Girls comes to Bristol, with an all-star cast, which includes: Lynda Bellingham (who continues to present ITV’s popular afternoon chat show Loose Women), Jennifer Ellison (Meg Giry in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera), Trudie Goodwin (23 years as Sergeant June Ackland in The Bill), and Ruth Madoc (much-loved star of the BBC’s Hi-De-Hi).

The show also features Bernie Nolan (one fifth of the singing Nolan sisters, and star of TVs The Bill and Brookside, Lisa Riley (forever remembered as Mandy Dingle in Emmerdale, Gwen Taylor (Duty Free, Heartbeat) Diana Moran (breakfeast television’s ‘Green Goddess’, Bruno Langley (Todd in ITV’s Coronation Street),and Joe Mcgann (The Upper Hand). While Danielle Lineker makes her stage debut.

A group of ordinary women, members of a very ordinary Yorkshire WI, spark a global phenomenon by persuading one another to pose for a charity calendar with a difference! As interest snowballs, the ‘CALENDAR GIRLS’ find themselves revealing more than they’d ever planned…

Tim Firth has adapted the screenplay of his smash hit film, released in 2003, for the stage. The film was an instant hit at the box office, becoming the number one grossing film in the UK. 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 Our House.

Calendar Girls is at The Bristol Hippodrome from Wednesday 26th January to Saturday 5th February 2011.