It might be fair to assume that the famous story of the Yorkshire Women’s Institute ladies who posed nude for a Pirelli-style calendar has been drained dry.
But Take That’s Gary Barlow and Tim Firth have collaborated on a delightful musical that is far superior both to the 2009 play, Calendar Girls, and to the 2003 movie on which it was based. Rather than seem like a piece of cynical exploitation, the show suggests the story has now achieved its ideal form.
Part of the reason is structural. In the movie, the collective disrobing happened at the beginning. In the play, it was the first-act climax, which meant the story had nowhere to go. In the musical, however, it is the culmination of a hard-won struggle to overcome private doubts and inhibitions. The calendar is the brainchild of the go-ahead Chris, who simply wants to provide a settee for the hospital where the husband of her good friend, Annie, died of cancer. But, while Chris is eager to unclothe for charity, her colleagues take a lot of persuading. The calendar shoot thus becomes less of a lark than a means of overcoming issues such as grief, age or physical self-consciousness.
The other reason for the show’s success is that it destroys the traditional demarcation between composer and lyricist. Barlow and Firth collaborated so closely, with each invading the other’s territory, that the show has a seamless quality rare in jointly authored musicals. You see the benefit in the opening number, Yorkshire, an extended chorale that introduces all the key characters and establishes the supposedly timeless nature of life in the Dales: “The seasons come and go and yesterdays don’t change.” But the whole point of the show is to dismantle that argument and prove that, through female agency and a bit of Yorkshire gumption, a life of cosy routine can be disrupted.
Once or twice, as when the depressed Ruth explores her reliance on vodka, I felt that each woman was being formulaically given a self-exploratory solo; but even that number pays off since Ruth uses drink to quell her fears about undressing. The idea that each woman has to overcome some personal hang-up is also deftly counterpointed by the portrait of a community and a profusion of verbal gags. Sometimes Firth’s jokes have a touch of the Carry Ons: at other times, as when a harassed mum declares, “If Jesus had had teenage kids, the Bible would have been very different,” you hear an echo of Alan Bennett. But the musical works beautifully because it suggests the calendar was a way of vanquishing private demons. These women strip to conquer.
Firth’s production also keeps them well this side of caricature. Joanna Riding as Annie offers a moving portrayal of marital loss, not least in a number, Kilimanjaro, about the difficulty of dealing with daily realities. In contrast, Annie’s chum Chris, played by Claire Moore, is a cheery soul even if she is now anxious about her pubescent son. There’s good work from Debbie Chazen as the lonely Ruth, Claire Machin as a musical single mum, and Sophie-Louise Dann as a golf-club Delilah. Robert Jones’s design, with its mountain of kitchen cabinets, imaginatively frames a show whose feelgood conclusion is genuinely earned rather than arbitrarily imposed.
• At the Phoenix theatre, London, until 22 April. Box office: 0844-871 7627.
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