Calendar Girls: A warm-hearted and very entertaining production

Photo: Maria Vartanova.

Despite all the nudge-nudge-wink-wink exploitive publicity and jokes, Calendar Girls is not mainly about a group of middle-aged-to-senior women posing nude.

Rather it is a story of friendship and the continuing ripples of successful fundraising that began with an unusual idea.

Based on the true story of a charitable project by a Women’s Institute in the Yorkshire Dales, the fictionalized version of Calendar Girls started as a 2003 movie starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. Five years later, Tim Firth adapted his movie script into a stage play. (A musical featuring the story debuted in England earlier this year.)

The idea that a creative member presented to the WI was intended to honour the recently deceased husband of another member — her closest friend — by raising money for leukemia research through sales of the annual WI calendar. In place of the usual landscapes, local buildings or recipes, this calendar would feature the WI members tastefully unclad.

Not only did the Yorkshire WI calendar raise a massive amount of money for the original charity scheme, but it also spawned similar-style calendars on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. (For example, a few years ago, a group from the Canadian Kennel Club sponsored a version with dogs in front of their owners’ private parts and a Mississippi Mills fundraiser developed a gender-neutral style featuring some local residents.)

Most recently, Ottawa Little Theatre has produced such a calendar featuring the cast of its Calendar Girls.

As directed by Venetia Lawless, OLT delivers a fine ensemble production of this sit-com plus comedy, demonstrating that the performers are having as much fun with the show as the audience clearly had on opening night.

The fact that the lead-up to the calendar shoot at the end of Act I and the carefully orchestrated (and covered) nude photographs are the real climax of the script make it difficult to maintain the momentum in Act II, despite the inclusion of some interesting back stories for calendar participants.

This is part of the reason that a key second-act scene — the testing of the friendship between Chris (Jane Morris) the calendar originator and Annie (Rosemarie Dawson-Hill) because Chris cares too much for the media spotlight — falls a little flat. But Morris, Dawson-Hill, Cheryl Jackson, Judy McCormick and especially Ann Scholberg and Janet Uren define their characters extremely well. Scholberg’s timing as retired schoolteacher Jessie (she does have some of the best lines) is excellent and Uren as Ruth, the oppressed wife of a womanizer, makes a finely wrought transition to fighting back. Little wonder that there is spontaneous applause when she faces down his latest conquest.

The men in the cast — particularly Geoff Gruson (also the designer of the effective set) as the dying John — each makes the most of individual moments in the sun, despite being only a little more than window dressing with the focus so firmly on the calendar models. As representatives of snobbery and the other woman Jenny Sheffield (in a dual role) and Pam Harle are also quite effective.

Altogether, this warm-hearted production of Calendar Girls is very entertaining.

Calendar Girls continues at Ottawa Little Theatre to April 16.

Calendar Girls

By Tim Firth

Ottawa Little Theatre

Director: Venetia Lawless

Set: Geoff Gruson

Lighting: John Solman

Sound: Lindsay Wilson

Costumes: Susan MacKinlay

Cast:

Cora……………………………………………….Judy McCormick

Chris………………………………………………Jane Morris

Annie………………………………………………Rosemarie Dawson-Hill

Jessie………………………………………………Ann Scholberg

Celia……………………………………………….Cheryl Jackson

Ruth………………………………………………..Janet Uren

Marie/Elaine……………………………………….Jenny Sheffield

Brenda……………………………………………..Patricia Kelly

John………………………………………………..Geoff Gruson

Rod…………………………………………………Mark Kielty

Lawrence/Liam…………………………………….Kurt Shantz