When 23 year old Marilyn Monroe posed for that now-famed calendar, such real revealed flesh was rarely readily visible. Historical hot stuff, eh? Time flies. She’d be 90 this year. Guys, do you think you’d want to peek at her if she were here at that age?
Yet, prurient interest never falters. So when a bunch of quite mature ladies decide to bare their stuff in a similar manner, you can bet some males, knowing what day it is without glancing above the desks, still might be interested.
Gals, of course, might be amused at the idea.
The ladies in question could be having a few laughs at men’s expense. In the play Calendar Girls, unfolding at The Playhouse, a different kind of expense, however,is the motivation.
These female residents of a small English village want to raise money for charity, raising eyebrows by selling the fold-out pages. Looking for some joint fun while they’re at it. This project, er, takes off nationally and puts them on other pages: newspapers. Sensations they didn’t anticipate. And suddenly “possibly the least fashionable, least pursued, most disregarded of all demographics,” said The Guardian, find themselves having to deal with more public exposure than they’d foreseen.
Incidentally, Bob Fischbach of the World-Herald wrote that this play “crackles throughout with surprisingly steady and effective laugh lines,” after taking in a SNAP Productions performance of last June.
Brits Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi kicked off this item in a script for the 2003 film, a major hit, grossing $96,000,000 worldwide following theatrical release on this side of The Atlantic. Then Firth created the 2008 stage version which broke the all-time British box office record for a play and has since spanned the globe. Last year a musical take, The Girls, emerged, Firth working with song-writer Gary Barlow. The former, by the way, is also co-writer of the film Kinky Boots, likewise based on real events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Firth.
Evidently, women everywhere have loved this story on the screen and on stage. Probably they won’t be shocked, nor would you, to learn that there is nudity in this show…some parts.
Calendar Girls is Apr. 15-May 8 at Howard and Rhonda Hawks Mainstage Theatre, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St. Weds.-Sat.: 7:30 p.m. Sunday: 2 p.m. Tickets $18-36. www.OmahaPlayhouse.org