Calendar Girls: The Musical at New Wimbledon Theatre

Soulmates Annie (Sarah Jane Buckley) and John (Phil Corbitt) have it all. With a love as boundless as the sea, it seems like nothing can pull them apart – until cancer strikes, threatening to destroy the very ties that bind them. Following Annie’s newly widowed status, best bud Chris (Rebecca Storm) suggests that the Women’s Institute, of which both ladies are members, raise funds for the hospital in which John was treated by posing nude for a calendar photoshoot in memory of him. The rest, well, is history.

Childhood friends Gary Barlow and Tim Firth team up to bring Calendar Girls, the award-winning musical sensation, based on a true story, to the grandeur that is the New Wimbledon Theatre stage. Warm-hearted, fun-loving and quaint are the adjectives best used to describe this tragicomedy, which celebrates female empowerment and solidarity amid times of hardship; however, it is Buckley’s delicate and soul-searching performance as the shattered yet sturdy wife trying to keep it together whilst embracing her future without the love of her life by her side that steals the show and pulls at those heartstrings.

Hats must go off to set designer Robert Jones. His realistic and captivating depiction of the Yorkshire Dales, which leaves audience members with a sense of serenity as they are whisked away from the bedlam that is city life to the carefree moorlands of the North, is an artistic delight, oneiric and harmonious.

Calendar Girls is much more than just a tale of friendship; it strives to highlight the fact that the fear of death resides in each and every being of the human race, not to mention the fact that it is sometimes in the toughest and most gruelling of situations that flourish the most beautiful of moments.

Ghazaleh Golpira

Calendar Girls: The Musical is at New Wimbledon Theatre from 1^st until 5^th October 2019. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.

Watch the trailer for Calendar Girls: The Musical here: