Calendar Girls the Musical
Gary Barlow and Tim Firth
Octagon Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Theatre by the Lake and New Wolsey Theatre production
Octagon, Bolton
October 8-31, 2026; 2hrs 40 mins
Imagine a church hall in Yorkshire, a meeting of the Women’s Institute group, and the green and pleasant land outside. Sunflowers are tenderly grown there, and characters are rough around the edges, but domestic and kind...
This is the Yorkshire of Jam and Jerusalem and of Calendar Girls the Musical, about a dozen ladies who took their clothes off for a calendar to honour a dear friend, John.
The opening number gives us "One More Year in Yorkshire" with its predictable homely comfort, and the scene is set. But here, for the Bolton Octagon (historically Lancashire, but culturally not too dissimilar, as I noted watching the marvellous Brassed Off here last year), director Paul Robinson has created a new take on what has become a classic show by Gary Barlow and Tim Firth.
This is a kind of musical theatre that takes our imagination even further that the usual suspension of disbelief as characters burst into song. Here they turn up to the WI meeting with instruments, to accompany themselves and comment, gloriously and musically, on the action.
As Robinson says in the programme, the result is that the music lives and breathes through the characters.
These actor-musicians perform some incredible feats, and are often multi-instrumentalists, fabulous singers and occasional dancers too. Not only that, but doing it all in the round and (spoiler) ultimately posing nude behind strategically placed sunflowers, currant buns and other accoutrements of the WI. The achievement of casting this show is alone enough to take your breath away.
And the number of moving parts (pun intended) takes us near enough to the limit of what is possible in terms of the demands on these performers. All the music is live on stage, the costume and character changes are complex, and if a character is required to play offstage clarinet, he or she simply has to disappear for the moment.
Sarah Groarke does a stunning job on trumpet and as Marie, the snooty WI Chair (from Cheshire, no less, perhaps an in-joke in reference to Barlow and Firth), and occasional bass, emoting in ways that are musically and physically taxing, as well as acting brilliantly.
But my personal award for ‘"acting or dancing through musicianship" goes to Rachel Hammond on clarinet, sax, guitar and ukelele variously, as well as playing Mrs Wilson Coffee, singing in the ensemble and (briefly) appearing naked in a pinny alongside Mrs Wilson Tea (Angela Caesar), a hilarious character actor and beautiful violinist.
The show isn’t perfect: sometimes the levels are tricky. You can mic singers but you can only really play a trumpet fanfare at a volume that risks overwhelming vocals.
There was a brief stop for a sound file that wasn’t quite playing ball (though nobody seemed to mind), and there might be tweaks as the run continues. Being in the round makes perfection impossible, but it’s still musically immersive and stunningly lively.
The shape of the drama is sometimes surprising: John’s tragedy hits us hard only half way through the first act, yet is so skilfully done that there are tears in the auditorium.
I must admit there were more tears in the celebration of the middle-aged female form in all its variety and glory as the actors de-robed, WI-burlesque style, for the "camera" in the climactic scene. In the round, this was an achievement of trust and mutual consent from the cast and intimacy coordinator Stephanie Dattani, and ultimately the audience too as we whooped and cheered in appreciation of the brave cast and of the women of Yorkshire who, as John said, were like the flowers of Yorkshire, where every stage has its own beauty, but the last phase is the most glorious.
With the most integrated kind of musical storytelling, true-story integrity and a celebration of bodies and spirits, this show is something special. Glorious indeed.
More info and tickets here
