Review: Calendar Girls the Musical at Theatre by The Lake

“…the most joyful celebration of life…a must-see of must-sees…”

Calendar Girls the Musical by Gary Barlow and Tim Firth, Theatre by The Lake

By Ken Powell

You know when you have a conversation with someone that you realise, in real time, sounded better in your head and should have stayed there? I did that last night, chatting to the press team at Theatre by the Lake (TBTL). The conversation went something like this:

“Hello, just to let you know there is some nudity in the show.”

“Oh good,” says I, “I was hoping I’d get to see some naked wrinkly old ladies.”

Awkward silence. Brain starts shouting Shut up!

“After all,” I say, telling brain to shush, “we got to see full frontal nudity with men taking showers in The Glee Club.”

Brain is now screaming Shut Up! SHUT UP!

“And some of them were very attractive men,” I finish with, now in agreement with my brain that this was A Very Bad Idea.

The staff smile uncomfortably at a reviewer they’ve known for years who has clearly just lost his marbles. I turn around muttering something about ‘sexual equality and all that’ and shuffle off to the bar for a Very Stiff Drink.

Well, I can tell you, there is nudity but – if you’ll excuse the unavoidable pun – barely. Calendar Girls is well known for the premise – based on a true story – of members of a Women’s Institute in Yorkshire who stripped off for a calendar to raise money to get a hospital ward a new sofa for visitors to use. Just as in the movie, the actual photos are done incredibly cleverly so that you don’t see anything other than a fair amount of skin. There’s nothing else that would make your mother-in-law blush. That is quite some astonishing feat considering this production is done ‘in the round’ at TBTL. They make full use of the floor space, from every angle, yet there’s no embarrassing slip.

But what’s so special about this production is that the nude scenes are probably the least important part of the story despite how much everyone knows what Calendar Girls is ‘all about’. This is a story about friendship, motherhood, loss, family and what it means to be Yorkshire – and perhaps, by extension, what it means to be northern or even simply British.

I warn you now – you will need tissues. And I say that as a man who is not fond of showing emotion in public. I was blubbering halfway through the first act! But I was also laughing too. I came into the interval needing another Very Stiff Drink. Act One had been an absolute rollercoaster of emotion.

You might think from this that the show is really heavy and serious. It’s not. It really isn’t. This may just be the most joyful celebration of life I’ve ever seen at TBTL and that is saying something because the bar is set really high at this theatre. I’ve seen some astonishing performances over the last twelve years or so, and the quality is so high that productions that are just ‘really very good’ can seem unfairly pale in comparison. This production is up there with the very best of the best.

When you’re not laughing or crying, you’re humming away to toe-tapping songs written by Gary Barlow. I’m not greatly fond of new musicals, almost all of which I feel have lost the ability to create a tune the way it seemed possible for, pretty much, the whole of the twentieth century. I’ve suffered some duds and grimaced my way through more modern attempts. No wonder productions like Mamma Mia do so well – they’re drawing on cracking music from the seventies and eighties. Perhaps it is the fact that Barlow grew up on all that and was producing excellent music with Take That in the last decade of the century that makes this musical work so well. I’ve been belting out “One more year in Yorkshireeeee…” since leaving the theatre last night and I can tell you I didn’t have singing an ode to Yorkshire repeatedly on my bingo card. Where songs are joyous, they are bursting with sunshine; when sad, my goodness – I don’t have the words. They don’t so much pull on your heartstrings as give them a damned good yank.

And then there’s the cast. Oh my.

Again, TBTL has set immensely high standards over the years for actors who can sing, dance, evoke empathy and make you belly laugh. This fifteen-strong cast is no exception. It’s almost impossible to pick out individuals for praise above the others. I might just as well pick a name at random and write an entire review about them. I will just pick out possibly the two actors playing the lead characters for mention, simply because of their importance to the plot. Christine Meehan, playing Annie whose husband is such a focus in the first act, is able to evoke such sympathy from the audience with a voice perfectly suited to the songs. The urge to rush onto the stage and hug this woman was hard to resist. Karen Holmes plays Chris, Annie’s best friend and instigator of the idea of a calendar. Holmes is entirely believable as this larger-than-life character and has a voice to match, belting out some songs so powerfully that you would be bowled over if you weren’t already sat down. Both of these characters were made very real by the actors.

If I have one complaint about the cast it is that Thomas Donnan, Leah Montgomery and Sol Taibi are listed as ‘supporting cast’ in the programme. There’s nothing supporting about these three young actors, playing the teenage roles in the story. They are 100% full cast members playing their important and demanding parts with ease and fluency. Leah Montgomery, in particular, is one I want to see again. She was able to show off her vocal talent in Act Two and I think we were all blown away by how good she was. Thomas Donnan, playing ‘head boy’ Danny, was wonderfully funny. I get the opportunity, for once, to say how much an actor has grown because Thomas is a local lad and used to be a rather handsome boy in my daughter’s class at primary school! Now he’s a dashingly handsome and talented actor as an adult; I’m quite certain I’ll see him perform again. Sol Taibi gave off wonderful Harry Enfield vibes and has natural comic timing. Hard not to love his character and his unrequited pangs of love. I remember all that well from my youth but I doubt I was as funny.

Calendar Girls is simply one of the few musicals that gets everything right, and I don’t just mean the careful placement of cakes and flowers. You have to be made of stone not to be moved by the tragedy but you will come out with a new zest for life, a love of people and very possibly a strong Yorkshire accent. This show is a must-see of must-sees. A definite six out of five stars. So what are you waiting for? Get a ticket!

Calendar Girls the Musical plays at Theatre by The Lake until 05 September. Tickets are available here.

Ken Powell is chief editor for Northern Arts Review and is also a bestselling author and writer for various publications around the world. A former school teacher, he continues to write educational books along with fiction and travelogues. You can find all his books and various websites here including his popular TEDx talk about the Global Village. He lives with his family in a wonderfully isolated village in West Cumbria where he enjoys drinking tea, chatting with the birds and winding up his dog. You can support his work (or just buy him a coffee) here.