Skip to main content

Review of Calendar Girls The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

The true story of Calendar Girls, a group of middle-aged ladies getting their kit off for a Women's Institute charity calendar became a global story and success back in 1999, and even more so when writer Tim Firth penned the 2003 film. It was inevitable that the success of the film would spur spin-offs, and in 2008 a stage play appeared, and then a few more years later, in 2015, Firth collaborated with Gary Barlow to produce this musical, first staged in Leeds. It became a success in the West End and in 2018 went on a UK tour. And now, we have a second tour travelling around the country with a slightly revised score and book. So, twenty years after the film, does the tale from Yorkshire still pull at the heartstrings?

The answer is yes, the story of Annie and her husband John's battle with leukaemia that spurs her friend Chris to come up with the thought of the calendar is still an emotional rollercoaster. However, with this mix of upbeat and gentle songs from Barlow, it is never overly dreary and sad. It helps that it has a fabulous cast of famous and less so stars of screen and theatre.

Leading the cast is a brilliantly emotional turn by Tanya Franks as Annie, riding that rollercoaster of emotion from the outset and seeking solace from her WI friends throughout. She is delightful and powerful in her solo musical numbers and fills many an audience member with a tear in the eye no doubt.

Her upbeat friend Chris is lively played by Amy Robbins and much of the energy of the group. She has the boldest singing voice of the ladies, belting out her numbers with verve. However, all of the cast of ladies are great, Honeysuckle Weeks is a delight as the more tomboy Cory, while it is also great to see stalwarts Maureen Nolan as Ruth and Marti Webb as Celia sharing the stage. Sadly Lyn Paul did not complete the trio as she was unavailable for the performance, however, understudy Jayne Ashley gave a spirited performance as understudy despite clearly not having the "years of experience" required of the character.

The show is excellently staged with a clever set created by Gary McCann and director Jonathan O'Boyle manages to keep things interesting as much as possible visually, despite the fact that it can drag a little, especially during the first half where it takes a lot of time to get going. The second half has much more pace and does eventually arrive at the calendar scene itself which is cleverly created on stage and amusingly received by the audience.

The musical direction from Jordan Alexander is impressive considering this is a small band of just five, but sound levels, especially early on were not quite right with music drowning out the lyrics of the early songs, which was a great shame. This shouldn't hopefully be an issue later in the week as it had already improved by the second act.

Calendar Girls The Musical is one of those shows that is well worth seeing, if only for how iconic it has become within our nation, despite the fact that it isn't quite up there with the very best musicals out there. It is unlikely that many will leave without having been entertained and the heartstrings tugged just a little.

Heartwarming and often very funny, this musical should appeal to all.


Performance reviewed: Tuesday 17th October 2023 at the Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes.

Calendar Girls runs at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday 21st October 2023.

For further details about Milton Keynes see their website at http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/milton-keynes-theatre/

Photos: Alex Harvey-Brown



Popular posts from this blog

Review of Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent performed by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton

The National Theatres Connections series of plays had been one of my highlights of my trips to R&D during 2014. Their short and snappy single act style kept them all interesting and never overstaying their welcome. So I was more than ready for my first encounter with one of this years Connections plays ahead of the main week of performances at R&D later in the year. Hacktivists is written by Ben Ockrent, whose slightly wacky but socially relevant play Breeders I had seen at St James Theatre last year. Hacktivists is less surreal, but does have a fair selection of what some people would call odd. Myself of the other hand would very much be home with them. So we are presented with thirteen nerdy "friends" who meet to hack, very much in what is termed the white hat variety. This being for good, as we join them they appear to have done very little more than hacked and created some LED light device. Crashing in to spoil the party however comes Beth (Emma-Ann Cranston)...

Review of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

This tour of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical has become sadly a double-tribute as it tours throughout the UK into 2023 and the love of its creator Jim Steinman, and the man who made his work world-famous, Meat Loaf, both lost in the last year, runs through the cast in this impressive version of the show. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell takes the Peter Pan idea and warps it into a dystopian world of a group of youth known as The Lost trapped forever at 18 years of age. The centre of this group is Strat, who, after a chance encounter, becomes under the spell of Raven. Of course, into this mix must come a megalomaniac, as all dystopian worlds really need. This is the father of Raven, Falco, who, with his wife Sloane, battle The Lost, Raven’s relationship with Strat, and indeed their own very bizarre relationship, to the backdrop of Steinman’s music. Bat Out of Hell doesn’t start particularly well, be it the performance or a show issue, for the first twenty minutes there is a lack of clarit...

Review of It's A Wonderful Life by Masque Theatre at the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

Remarkably I only saw the classic film It's A Wonderful Life last Christmas, this was thanks to spotting it lurking on my subscription of Netflix. A glorious heartwarming film perfect for Christmas? That must be why I was a blubbering mess at the end of it then. There was hope that in public, The Masque Theatre's performance of the radio version of the story didn't leave me in the same situation. As it happened it did a little as that final scene in the Bailey household played out again, but it didn't matter as there were members of the cast in the same broken state as many of us audience members. Left to right: Jo Molyneux, John Myhill, Lisa Wright, Michael Street, Lisa Shepherd and Jof Davies This was the first radio play that I had seen performed and on the evidence of this, I sure would like to see some more. While not having the drama of standard plays in their creation of moment and places, they do have a rather striking drive towards character creation. The ...