Calendar Girls the Musical at New Wolsey Theatre – review

“Honestly, can anyone see my nipples?” Make a date. The glorious, life affirming Calendar Girls musical is back for a new regional run and the show has lost none of its magic.It’s impossible not to be swept along by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow’s timeless story of how a Yorkshire WI turned charity fundraising on its head.

Calendar Girls first captured hearts worldwide when it premiered in 2003 as an award-winning film. Five years later there was a hugely successful play. The 2015 musical version was another perfectly placed step for the tale’s journey.

What is different about the New Wolsey Theatre’s co-production is that its cast are actor-musicians who deftly whip out a guitar or clarinet for Barlow’s numbers and deliver a show-stopping scene. Director Paul Robinson said the adaptation will “add an authentic breathing pulse to the storytelling”. Truthfully I don’t think it really adds that much other than displaying another string in the collective bow of the engaging cast. But the production doesn’t need gimmicks with a true story of such emotional heft.

It is much a tale about Yorkshire grit as it is about how the doughty ladies of a WI abandoned scenes of local churches, and talks about the history of broccoli, to find an inventive way of raising money. They hoped to raise about £5,000 to buy a new sofa for a hospital waiting room where one of the members, Annie (Christina Meehan superb as the beating heart of the story), had sat while her husband and childhood sweetheart, John, underwent treatment for leukaemia.

In the end they raised more than £6 million by selling an awful lot of calendars. They also spawned a whole new industry with everyone from firefighters to farmers getting their kits off for their own charities.

Chris (a splendid Karen Holmes delivering tears and laughs as Annie’s gutsy, devoted best pal), has a light bulb moment and comes up with a novel idea for the WI ladies to bare all for the group’s annual calendar. They bolster each other, forget their own domestic troubles and, with a group hug, bare their well-upholstered breasts to the camera (tactfully hidden with some well placed iced buns and other accoutrements). The calendar shoot is beautifully choreographed and precedes a cracker of a finale.

Rachel Hammond and Angela Caesar, as the Wilson Sisters, are quietly amusing as they trip about the stage delivering tea and coffee. And my sympathy to Neil Moors whose barnstorming performance as John is all too brief. The Calendar Girls film may be almost 25-years-old but it has lost none of its power to move audiences. The stage show delivers an abundance of laughter and  tears.