Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough
This celebratory show by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow delivers emotional openness alongside cracking jokes
One of the great qualities of Calendar Girls is its ordinariness. It takes place in a landscape of Morrisons supermarkets, hospital waiting rooms and traffic jams. The year is marked by carol concerts and cake competitions. Only here, in the fictional Yorkshire Dales village of Knapely, would Cheshire seem snooty and crazy paving seem outre.
Another great quality is its understanding of community. Sure, it makes fun of the jam-and-knitting conservatism of the Women’s Institute, but deep down it is wiser than that. For one thing, the middle-aged women who gather to hear such scintillating talks as Brenda Hulse’s lecture on broccoli are more like naughty schoolgirls than small-town reactionaries. For another, they have a radical instinct for collective action.
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