Calendar Girls by Tim Firth

Although The Roo Theatre is a fairly small and compact theatre it was not a full house for this evening’s performance. The audience consisted of mostly middle aged women dressed in their best. And our small group got lots of lovely comments about our red hats and being told how much we were admired for the things that we do. The more we go out the more we find that people seem to open up and chat when they see us sporting our red hats. And we ladies get lots of chances to network …….and all because of a simple red hat. Life is grand!!!

Any back to telling you about Calendar Girls – Most of the action is located within a village hall. There is an amateur dramatic feel to the staging that works well with this play. The plot is about real events; the making of a nude calendar by members of a Yorkshire Women’s Institute (WI) who after reeling from the loss of one of their peers husbands, band together to shoot a nude calendar to raise funds for a small memorial (a sofa for the cancer ward’s waiting room). However in doing this they not only raise the required money but capture the attention of the world’s press and get more than they bargained for.

The ladies in the WI are a group of women - bored, retired, frustrated, and searching - who are bonded by their dislike for their snobby chairwoman. Without spoiling it too much for those that have not seen it, it really is a testament to the confidence of the performers, and the competence of the staging and direction that nothing is actually revealed, and the emotional reaction from the characters is nothing but infectious, with laughter and applause ringing around the theatre as they strike a tastefully nude pose for the slightly embarrassed photographer.

The message however remains clear and present throughout, and the strong sense of community between the characters, the moral of the story, the supportive nature of women and their capacity to love, really did hit home.

All in all, it was a terrific performance where no one performer eclipses another. The girls refer to themselves as “women of a certain age”, and that really was the target audience this evening. While everyone in The Roo Theatre seemed to enjoy themselves, it was the “women of a certain age” and us Red Hatters that really got into the performance, and maybe were more able to read into the nuances in the play that would go over the heads of a younger theatre goer or some of the men in the audience.

It was a good night but as one of my fellow Red Hatters said, “I still preferred Pippin”. And I would have to agree with that and we both suspect it was because Pippin was a musical and nothing to do with young men in tights.

Low Pay? Don't Pay

“Low  Pay? Don’t Pay!” - Written by Dario Fo – was originally set in Italy at a time of social upheaval.  However this production was translated to reflect the current social and political life of the workers in Wollongong.  Workers were striking in a bid to win better wages and women wouldn't accept that they were inferior.  This production takes Fo's writing and embellishes it with slap stick (reminded us girls of John Cleese and the Ministry Funny Walks) which is at times daft but never degenerates into the surreal.  Stage managers are brought into the action to get extra laughs by clever use of props.

As part of the civil unrest, people refused to pay spiralling prices for electricity and consumer goods. In fact they insisted on paying only what they considered to be a fair price for essential items - or nothing at all. Shoplifting and theft became rife.

Low Pay? Don’t Pay!” traces the story of Antonia and Margherita as they join the crowds of people taking groceries from a supermarket without paying.  It follows their hilarious attempts to disguise their ill-gotten gains from their hot-headed moralist husbands, Giovannin and Luigi – not to mention the police - by resorting to more and more inventive hiding places.  Finally they take to hiding them under their coats and pretending to be pregnant. The audience was in uproar when Antonia’ announced she had a wet butt but it wasn’t her waters that had broken, it was a bag of olives!

The twist to the play see the husbands fall from their high moral position as they discover they have been made redundant  and they secure some goods that just happen to have fallen off the back of a lorry. 

 The play had a slow start with sections where there was no laughs as time was taken to explain the social conditions.  The result was that “Low Pay? Don’t Pay” was an amusing entertaining evening rather jaw-achingly funny one. 

All the jaw-achingly funny stuff took place outside of the theatre; while the ladies in the back seat of Vanessa’s car struggled to get the seat belts on without strangling themselves.  It was a great evening; great company and excellent value for money.