Joy Watters reviews Calendar Girls now showing at Caird Hall, Dundee.
The true story of the Yorkshire women who created a nude calendar as a charity fund-raiser in the aftermath of a tragic death and found themselves with a best seller is well known through the original media coverage, subsequent film and play.
The success of the calendar wildly exceeded the expectations of the women, all members of the local Women's Institute, and affected lives, for better and for worse.
The changing relationships are the stuff of the stage version (in Dundee until Saturday) with the scene of the women posing for the nude photos, the comic nugget.
This touring production features an octet of well-known female faces, from cinema and TV. The two central characters are Annie (Sue Holderness) whose husband John's premature death from blood cancer is the trigger for the fund -raising. The other is her best friend Chris (Lesley Joseph), who is the feisty driving force for it all.
The pair work well together in drawing a picture of the friendship which is damaged by Chris' inability to see when to stop the publicity. Holderness shows the pain and the grief of her character, combined with quiet determination, while Joseph captures the fighting spirit of a woman on a mission.
The other characters are more sketchily drawn in Tim Firth's stage adaptation.
The indomitable Ruth Madoc is somewhat off the wall as the WI boss with a performance apparently from another show, rather at odds with the realism of the other interpretations. Perhaps she was responding to the considerable size of the venue which is not ideal for the more poignant reflective moments of the play.
There were some problems in hearing all the dialogue, perhaps more due to the high timbre of most of the cast's voices than the size of the auditorium.
The scene where the women strip off to pose for the calendar with strategically placed buns, flowers and other WI totems, is so swift, there is no hint of indecency. It is a lot of fun and nicely executed.
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