Guest reviewer Andrew Clarke gives us thoughts on this story of friendship, adversity and bigger buns!
For many people playwright Tim Firth is the new Alan Bennett – a northern writer who has that wonderful ability to highlight the absurdities in modern life and to draw well-defined, if somewhat flawed, characters that exude warmth as they forge relationships inside families or within communities.
This is certainly the situation in his beloved play Calendar Girls which tells the true story of the Knapeley WI who created a best-selling nude calendar to raise money to buy a new sofa for their local cancer hospital following the death of John Baker, husband of one of the WI members.
Firth’s fictionalized retelling of the story has Chris and Annie as the two friends at the heart of the action supported by friends and fellow WI members Cora, Ruth, Celia and Jessie along with their disapproving leader, the ultra-respectable Marie.
One of the strengths of this production is how all the actors made the members of the Knapeley WI such distinct individuals – these weren’t job lot middle-aged ‘Jam and Jerusalem’ stock characters but rather a community of real women with their own personalities, fears and enthusiasms.
Mel Robinson and Issy Alway did a terrific job at creating a wonderfully believable antagonistic relationship between Chris and Annie – their back and forth banter could only have come about after years of solid friendship. This slightly fractious friendship not only anchors the play in reality but also is the powerhouse behind the creation of the calendar.
Mel and Issy’s subversive twosome are enabled by Natasha Stevenson’s ebullient, piano-playing Cora, who puts her stunning voice to good use as the musical member of the WI. Ellie Hardwick gives the shy and youthful Ruth some beautifully nuanced tragedy of her own, which is gradually revealed during the course of the play and forms a lovely ‘spring and autumn’ friendship with Sue Hayes’ Jessie, the oldest (but young at heart) member of the group.
Laura Oxford makes Celia, the motorbike loving, dark horse of the gang and it’s not a stretch that the whole group of them could have been educated at St Trinian’s in their youth – much to the despair of Mandy William’s uptight Marie, for whom respectability is everything.
Neil Jackson brings a lot of natural charm and upbeat bonhomie to the role of John, Annie’s husband, who dies of leukemia and is the focus of the calendar’s fundraising efforts. He maybe a man but his good-natured tomfoolery makes him part of the gang.
Neil’s intelligent portrayal of John’s decline gives this production a lot of power and you understand why the women would do something so daring to try and make a difference.
Ian Quickfall’s direction is assured and he gives the actors plenty of room to put their stamp on the show. He has also given them a meeting hall set that looks almost as real as the room we are sitting in.
Sadly, there is a downside to the evening which is outside the control of everyone at The Masque Players and that is the nature of audience expectation and this casts a huge, undeserved shadow over the production which is entirely undeserved.
One of the inherent problems with an amateur company tackling Calendar Girls is that the audience can’t get over the fact that the actors – often people they know – are going to strip off at some point during the evening.
You get a sense of this as soon as you step across the threshold of the venue. Queuing to enter the auditorium you can’t help overhearing snatches of conversation around you which typically go along the lines of: “Oh, they are so brave,” “I don’t know how they can do it. I couldn’t,” or “I wouldn’t do this even if you paid me…” and so on.
When, towards the end of the first act, the moment comes when the adventurous WI members are required to disrobe and display their natural beauty behind well-placed items of WI furniture each pose, acted out month by month, is given a hearty round of applause by the packed first night audience. It feels like we are applauding a series of daredevil stunts or magic tricks performed by a circus act or magician rather than watching an on-going scene which is part of a dramatic narrative.
How you combat this I don’t know but it does take you out of the emotional heart of the story. You become aware you are watching a performance rather than losing yourself in a wonderful piece of theatre.
Happily, once the second act begins and the nude demons have been dismissed, the play is allowed to settle down and the actors, now more relaxed, manage to, once again, put their stamp on the proceedings.
It’s a great show with great performances and deserves our support – not only because it provides a good evening’s entertainment but because it is raising funds for the Blossom Appeal which seeks to build a new breast care centre at Ipswich Hospital.
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