Barefaced brilliance

Calendar Girls
Noël Coward

Only When I Laugh
Arcola

Ooh dear, the critics have been terribly sniffy about Calendar Girls. This dazzlingly funny, shamelessly sentimental and utterly captivating tale of middle-aged women posing naked to raise cash for charity should have won five-star plaudits all round. But the reviews have thrown a veil over its brilliance. Why? Well, we critics dislike these schmaltzy populist confections because they deprive us of the chance to flex our intellect in public and serve up a perspicacious and polysyllabic exegesis. Ironically, though, my colleagues have not only shortchanged the show they’ve also missed the opportunity to do their brainy show-off bit — like this. The themes of Calendar Girls are rooted in ancient, universal myth. The ritual sacrifice of a ‘virgin’ (i.e., the ladies’ modesty) leads to the expiation of a tribal curse (the threat of cancer). J.G. Frazer would have given it at least two chapters. The show starts a little sluggishly and its first half-hour culminates with a comedy-of-embarrassment scene in which Chris (played with big-boobed gusto by Lynda Bellingham) receives a baking prize for a cake she bought at Marks and Sparks. Dramatically, this is small stuff but its tone — the blend of affection and mockery — is beautifully pitched. Another complaint is that the Billy Elliot, Full Monty formula is too predictable: quaintly downtrodden northerners overcome adversity and discover fulfilment. But this is no mere fictional titillation. It really happened. The ladies’ original plan was to raise 500 quid to replace the cancer unit’s dysfunctional settee, whose bristling springs pronged holes in their tights. Within a few months the campaign goes global and a letter arrives from the charity disclosing that the fund stands at £518,000. ‘Unable to find a settee at that price, even in Harrogate, we have invested in a new wing.’