About the Play:

Calendar Girls is a full-length comedy adapted by Tim Firth from the film of the same name. Based on the uplifting and very inspiring true story of a group of ordinary women who posed nude for a calendar to raise money to buy a sofa for the visitor's room of their local hospital in memory of one of their husbands who died of leukemia. The calendar is a success, and their efforts to buy a $5000 sofa resulted in them raising over $5 million dollars for Leukemia Research and the construction of a new wing for the hospital.

Calendar Girls is a beautiful portrait of love, loss, and just how far kindred souls will go in the name of friendship. When Annie's husband John dies of leukemia, she and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new sofa in the local hospital waiting room. They manage to persuade four fellow Women's Institute (WI) members to pose nude with them for an "alternative" calendar. With their modesty spared only by artfully placed cakes, knitting and flower arrangements, and a little help from the hospital porter and an amateur photographer Lawrence they complete their calendar. Puzzling their husbands, mortifying their children and riding the wrath of the outraged WI, the news of the women's charitable venture spreads like wildfire. As media interest snowballs, hordes of press soon descend on the small village of Knapeley in the Yorkshire Dales (UK). The calendar is a success, but Chris and Annie's friendship is put to the test under the strain of their new-found fame, and the Calendar Girls find themselves exposed in ways they'd never expected, revealing more than they'd ever planned. A very English story with a very English heart, Calendar Girls is quirky, poignant and hilarious.

Calendar Girls opened in 2009 at the Chichester Festival Theatre as part of a UK Tour. It transferred to the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End in 2010 and was nominated for an Olivier and won the 2010 What's On Stage Best New Comedy. It has since become the fastest selling play in British theatre history and regularly performed in regional and community theatre productions worldwide.

Cast: 9 female, 4 male

What people say:

"Calendar Girls, with a script by Tim Firth who also co-wrote the movie, achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, and it leaves you feeling better about life than you did when you entered the theatre." — Sunday Times

"It's a show full of poignant moments – about friendship, determination and hope; about loss in many forms; about the importance of acceptance; about knowing when to let go. But it also offers plenty of humour, as the six friends and WI members decide to pose nude for a calendar." — Financial Times

"Unashamedly sentimental and full of heart and bare-faced cheek, Tim Firth's stage adaptation of his own film script, inspired by the group of Yorkshire WI members who stripped off for a charity calendar to raise money for Leukaemia Research, should rake in a bob or two itself." — The Guardian

About the Playwright:

Tim Firth ii an English dramatist, screenwriter and songwriter. He is perhaps best known for being the writer of Calendar Girls, one of the most successful British films of all time, as well as being a hugely successful stage show.