Calendar Girls
by Tim Firth
Directed by Lesley Carter.
A group of extraordinary women, members of a very ordinary Yorkshire Women’s Institute (WI), persuade one another to pose for a charity calendar with a difference – no more photos of Wharfedale bridges or Norman churches for them. Overcoming their initial reserve, the friends drop their dressing gowns, their modesty spared only by artfully placed cakes, knitting and flower arrangements.
At first glance it should look like your classic WI calendar. Jams, cakes, sewing and all that quaint stuff! And it is, except for one thing the ladies are nude, yes nude…the ladies are not naked, they’re nude. Puzzling their husbands, mortifying their children and riding the wrath of the outraged WI, they spark a global phenomenon. But as media interest snowballs, the Calendar Girls find themselves exposed in ways they’d never expected, revealing more than they’d ever planned. The play is based on the true story of eleven WI members who posed nude for a calendar to raise money for the Leukaemia Research Fund. Calendar Girls is quirky, poignant and hilarious.
