The Calendar Girls musical isn’t perfect, but it’s gorgeous
Can a women-led British musical succeed in the West End? I ask this only because in the past few years, we’ve seen both
Made in Dagenham and Bend It Like Beckham meet with broad approval (ecstatic, actually, in the case of the latter) but fail to show much staying power at the box office.
The Girls, based on the hugely popular, much loved Calendar Girls film of 2003 (and the lucrative, if less admired stage play of 2008) might just crack it. For starters, it can count on coachloads of ladies from the WI and parties of Take That fans. After all, it’s based on the true story of the WI pals from the Yorkshire village of Rylstone who in 1999 posed in the cheekily concealed nuddy for a charity calendar that made national headlines. And Take That’s frontman Gary Barlow – joining scriptwriter and fellow Cheshire-ite Tim Firth, who also directs – has penned a baker’s dozen of numbers packed with more-ish sentimentality and glazed with a feelgood sheen.
I’m not going to beat about the baps, though. This show has been in try-out since early last year but despite much diligent polishing and the raw potency of the score – if you have heartstrings, prepare for them to be tugged – it’s not quite up there with the celluloid original, which starred Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, though it’s a definite advance on the play.
Technically, it’s entirely apt for the big reveal to come at the show’s denouement but the storyline is apron-string thin as a consequence (none of the film’s second-half wrangling in the wake of sudden onset celebrity has been included). While it does mean there is added scope for a touchy-feely exploration of the leading ladies’ emotional states, from anxieties about body image to the grief of widowed Annie (Joanna Riding) over the death of her husband, the characterisation is also on the slender side.
“It is what it is,” an audiencemember rather sniffily remarked when an enthusiastic usher asked for his verdict during the interval. Well, yes, there’s no staking a claim for this as the next Matilda or Billy Elliot. Yet I feel absurdly curmudgeonly damning it with faint praise. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Were there moments when I was fighting back the tears? Yes again.
The design is not to be sniped at: Robert Jones has studded picturesque rolling hills with domestic wooden cupboards, bringing the “green and pleasant land” aspect of the surroundings literally home. Meanwhile florists Chris and Rod’s buckets of sunflowers become an all-engulfing motif. The sound of it, too, is unrelentingly gorgeous and stirring, whether it’s solos or rousing communal outpourings. Riding’s Annie breaks your heart twice – first with Scarborough, in which she recalls holidaying with her late husband, then Kilimanjaro, in which every moment now spent alone is likened to a mountain climb. And the WI should adopt What Age Expects, a ditty of defiance at advancing infirmity and the patronising that goes with it – spiritedly sung by Michele Dotrice’s Jessie – as its anthem.
The musical arrangements are as finessed as the placements of WI paraphernalia – cake stand, jam stall and supersized trophy – with which the ladies’ modesty is preserved during the frantic, wham-bam photo-shoot finale. Not a fully rounded pleasure, then, but for all its obvious blemishes, it’s still a beaut.