I don’t generally spend my Saturday nights watching middle-aged women pose nude in front of strategically placed baked goods and floral displays, but when I do I make sure it’s for an excellent cause.
Epicentre Theatre Company’s production of Calendar Girls at Chatswood’s Zenith Theatre was one such event, with funds raised for the very worthwhile Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation.
Based on a true story, Calendar Girls tells the tale of a group of women in Northern England who decide to raise funds by raising eyebrows and strip off for a calendar to raise money for cancer research. Vodka shots ensue and next thing we know, the brave ladies are ready for their close-ups wearing nothing but cupcakes and tea cozies.
Told with trademark British sense of humour and a whole lot of heart, Calendar Girls proves that age is just a number and that you’re only as old as you feel. Also, that there is an important distinction to be drawn between being naked and being nude. The former “involves detail” while the latter “involves whiskey”.
And the most important provision of all: that it should “involve no front bottoms!”
The lovely lady selling the charity calendars in the foyer assures me that this production is infinitely better than the 2003 film of the same name starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. She tells me that the real significance of the story is about “finding the light”.
Indeed, Calendar Girls is a story of friendship and finding light despite the darkness, woven together beautifully by the motif of a sunflower, named so “not because they look like the sun but because they follow it”.
“Wherever the light may be, no matter how weak, those flowers will find it.”
Epicentre Theatre Company’s poignant production of Calendar Girls found the light and breathed life back into a script, which, in the wrong hands, could be at risk of coming off as dated. But Calendar Girls is all about the story and that story is most definitely worth telling for years to come.
And one thing’s for certain: I’ll easily have the most eccentric calendar out of everyone I know next year!
For more information on the Epicentre Theatre Company please visit: www.epicentretheatre.org.au
For more information on the Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation please visit: www.arrow.org.au
