Latest news with #CalamityJane
RTÉ News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Calamity Jane: 'It's a role that's got everything'
Oh, the Deadwood Stage is a-rollin' up Misery Hill. Yep, the much-loved musical Calamity Jane is heading to Dublin and John Byrne talks to the show's star, West End legend Carrie Hope Fletcher. Now you're talkin'! There have been some amazing shows at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin over the years - but few can match the sheer exuberant joy that is Calamity Jane. No childhood is complete without falling in love with Doris Day in the film about the Wild West's ultimate tomboy. That 1953 musical has been a TV staple for decades, and inspired a stage musical that arrived in 1961 and has enjoyed many revivals ever since. The latest production of the whip-crackin' Broadway and West End hit musical is out on tour and making its way to Dublin. Starring multi-award-winning West End star Carrie Hope Fletcher, Calamity Jane will run August 19-23 of August 2025 at the Bord Gáis. This foot-stomping show features all the sure-fire classic songs including The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away), The Black Hills of Dakota, Just Blew in from the Windy City, and the Oscar-winning Secret Love. Jane is played by Carrie Hope Fletcher, a three-time WhatsOnStage Best Actress in a Musical winner. She most recently originated the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella (Gillian Lynn Theatre, West End). Her previous credits include Veronica in Heathers, Wednesday in The Addams Family and Eponine in Les Misérables. Carrie is also a 2022 Grammy nominee for two competing albums for Best Musical Theatre Album - Cinderella (Original Concept Album) and Les Misérables: The Staged Concert (Live Album). Carrie has also enjoyed solo touring, and even found time to write several best-selling novels. She enjoys a huge social media presence with her YouTube channel with over a million views every month. Now she's playing the fearless, gun slingin' Calamity Jane, the biggest mouth in Dakota territory and someone who's always up for a fight. She's a charmer too, especially when trying to win the heart of the dashing Lieutenant Gilmartin or even when shooting insults at the notorious Wild Bill Hickok. John Byrne: Carrie Hope Fletcher! How are ya? It must be quite a buzz to be playing a legendary role such as Calamity Jane? Carrie Hope Fletcher: I know! It's a pretty iconic one. Straight away, you think of the film starring Doris Day. But the stage version's been around a long time too. How do the stage and film versions compare? There's a couple of different songs in the stage version that weren't in the movie. And there's a couple of new things for anyone who knows the movie inside-out. Because Doris Day is so iconic I had to make a very solid decision whether I was going to do a bad impression of Doris Day - because no one can be Doris Day. No one can match up to the magic she created - and in every role that she played. So either I always fall short doing a bad impression of Doris Day, or I succeed at doing my own version of Calamity Jane. So it was kind of a no-brainer in terms of what I would do. But it is tough, because I think there are a lot of people who come and watch the show, and expect me to play Doris Day playing Calamity Jane. So I'd hope that I'd win them over by the end. But Carrie - let's face it. One glance at your CV and it's obvious that you've done a pretty good job at being yourself. The one thing that the stage show has as an advantage is that the musicians are also the cast. And you are watching the cast members play their instruments live on stage. There is no hidden band. The only people we have backstage are a pianist and a percussionist. Everything else - all of the trumpets, saxophones, the cellos, the double bass, the clarinets - are all played by the cast live on stage. It adds a huge layer of magic to the show. Usually the band is hidden in a pit, in the dark. But here you get to see them. Not only see them, but see them playing all the roles that you know and love from Calamity Jane. For me, the thing about Calamity Jane is that you're going to come out from the show with a smile on your face. Guaranteed. Yeah! It's a real feelgood show. And while Les Mis will always be my favourite musical, I will always come out of that sobbing my heart out, feeling very sad for the next week, and Calamity Jane is the complete opposite of that. You come out feeling happy and feeling good about life. And this is a time when we need something like that. People like yourself have the gift of making people happy. How is the tour going for you guys? We've had such an incredible response on tour in the UK [the tour's in Plymouth when we spoke - JB], and Calamity Jane has so much nostalgia attached to it. People love that movie and they love the story. They watched it when they were kids and they've such strong memories attached to it. But I also think that the response that we've had to it is the fact that it's such a feelgood show. And now you're bringing the show to Dublin. Have you played the Bord Gáis before? I did, once. In 2017. It was The Addams Family. Brilliant! So you know what the deal is - you turn up and everybody has a good time. I'm so excited to come back! It's such a wonderful theatre, but it's also a wonderful area. There's always logistics that a performer thinks about, like where is the nearest coffee shop? Where's the nearest restaurant? Where's the nearest book shop? And that space has it all. So, yeah, it's just a very comfortable place to be in a touring show. And there's a lot of people on this tour who haven't been to Dublin before. Everyone who has been before is really, really excited for them to experience it. Looking through the list of famous names who've played Calamity Jane, it's clear that it's a role many would aspire to playing. What is the attraction? Well, she's got everything. It's a role that has everything. I always say that usually you have to have a whole career behind you in order to play a character role, a love interest, an action hero. They're all different characters - and here you get to complete the whole set. Calamity Jane is all of them. She gets the love story with Wild Bill Hickok, and the love ballad. She gets to be funny with all the comedic lines. She gets a bit of slapstick with the physical comedy. She's the action hero who gets to do some gunslinging and the stagecoach driving. She gets to dance. And she gets to wear the buckskins and the pretty pink dress! It's everything in one role. Usually, all of those things are separated into different roles you are lucky to play in your lifetime. I was going to ask you how you'd rate the role in terms of the parts you played in your career - but that seems unfair. It's almost like ranking your children. It really is! But I think I would safely be able to say that Calamity is my favourite. As well as a hugely successful career in musical theatre, you've been writing books, making films, recording albums - and having babies. You really are Miss Busy, aren't you? It's all sort of slowing down now that I've had my first little girl. She's the priority. It does change your perspective on everything. I used to be, 'Oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead' but can't afford to do that now. I've got a little girl who relies on me to be alert, have my wits about me, so no more all-nighters writing books for me. I'm still sort of figuring it out. How to juggle it all and where it all fits. I'\ll get there eventually! While I'm tour, she's with me half-and-half. Sometimes she's with me, sometimes she's not. We have discovered that she does not settle in new environments and therefore doesn't sleep. So I don't sleep. And then Calamity Jane is really tough. It was a learning curve. We knew it was going to be hard. We knew it would be trial and error. We're figuring it out day by day.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Langholm Operatic and Dramatic Society changes name and seeks new talent
Langholm Theatre Group, previously known as Langholm Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society, is looking for new talent to join their next musical production. Members of the group decided to change their name at an Extra-Ordinary General Meeting as it was felt that the word "operatic" was a factor in deterring potential members from joining the society. The group, which has been running for 102 years, has put on a range of musicals, plays, and concerts, including The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, and Calamity Jane. Annie Get Your Gun stars Leona Mason in the lead role (Image: Naomi House) Last year, the group staged a production of Annie Get Your Gun. They are currently seeking new members, including both those interested in acting as well as joining the production team. Anyone over the age of 14 is welcome to join. The group is also seeking a producer or director for their March 2026 show. President Jackie Beckett said: "It has been fantastic to see new members coming along to join the society in recent years, but we need more. "If anyone has ever wanted to be on stage, or even help in other ways, please get in touch. "You don't need to live in Langholm as we have members who travel from outwith the town. "And you will be made most welcome." People interested in joining can email for more information. The group's annual general meeting was held on Thursday, May 12, at Langholm Town Hall.
Time Out
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Keith Ramsay (Peanut)
Corn. Corn. Corn corn corn. Corncorncorncorncorn. Corn. Corn corn corn corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Coooooooooooooooooooooooorn. Crn. CORN. CORN! Corn. Corn? ¡Corn! Corn. Broadway hit Shucked is a musical about corn, and very funny it is too. In part that's simply because a story about a group of corn-loving hicks is intrinsically amusing: corn! It's a funny word in its way, especially when said as often as it's said in Shucked (which is a lot). And it's not just jokes about corn: book writer Robert Horn is an absolute ninja with a one-liner, and Shucked is near enough wall-to-wall with the things. I sort of don't want to spoil any. But I also want to prove I didn't just go along for the press buffet (chargrilled corn and cornbread) so here are a few gems: 'I was playing frisbee with a goat; he's a lot heavier than I thought'; 'your grandma died doing what she loved – making toast in the bathtub'; 'he was head over heels, which is just standing upright'; just multiply that sort of thing by around 200 and you've got a pretty good idea what the show is like. There's a moment early on in Jack O'Brian's production when it looks like Shucked might serve as an acerbic satire on America's capacity for self delusion. It's set in the town of Cob County, a corn-growing community that has apparently avoided all meaningful contact with the outside world, which sounds like a solid metaphor for American isolationism, especially when the crop fails and the townspeople react with disdainful horror when plucky youngster Maizy (Sophie McShera) suggests she go out into the outside world to look for answers. The show is narrated by the amusingly inept Storyteller 1 (Monique Ashe-Palmer) and Storyteller 2 (Stephen Webb), who have the air of two overgrown, overexcited children tasked with delivering a school assembly. There's another brilliantly satirical moment when they look at each other with panicked uncertainty during their assertion that nobody owned the land when their pilgrim forefathers showed up. But after that it's mostly just corn gags. Arguably the plot is simply 'corn puns' Shucked is as good as its one-liners, which is to say that it's very good while the one-liners are being delivered, but there's not a lot there beyond them. The plot follows a formulaic turn, not dissimilar to Calamity Jane, as plucky Maizy ventures out into civilization (well, Tampa, Florida, a concept that's probably funnier if you're American), leaving her more conservative fiance Beau (Ben Joyce) behind. Eventually she crosses paths with Matthew Seadon-Young's dodgy 'big city' podiatrist Gordy– that is to say he treats corns, not corn, but Maizy fails to understand the difference. Determining that Cob County seems to possess an abundance of a rare, valuable mineral that could make his debts go away, Gordy tells the now smitten Maizy that he can solve the town's ills. The characters are all fairly rote – despite his blank slate nature Webb's childishly overexcited Storyteller 2 is the most original creation, although Georgina Onuorah is magnificent as Maizy's monumentally sassy cousin Lulu. There's barely the pretence that Beau's brother Peanut (Keith Ramsay) is even a character: he's just a kind of savant pun dispenser, which is saying something by this show's standards. The country-style songs by Brandy Clarke and Shane McAnally are left to deepen and humanise the characters a little, though it's a mixed bag - the galloping hoedown breakdown of opener 'Corn' (yes, really) is one of several genuinely very amusing tunes, but other songs have an earnestness that feels completely out of place. I can see why Shucked would have been a breath of fresh air on Broadway, where it came from leftfield with an enigmatic advertising campaign purely based on corn puns, with no explanation of what the plot was (I mean arguably the plot is in fact 'corn puns'). But it comes to London as the opening show in Drew McOnie's first season at the Open Air Theatre with the sense it's less an eccentric piece of outsider art, but rather a big shiny Broadway hit. It maybe doesn't have the underdog charm it has in the US, and its flaws are more exposed. I'd also maybe point to the fact it's panto-like, an artform Americans are rarely exposed to but that we're inundated with every year. In general I think it could be spikier, darker and more satirical, but presumably Horn simply isn't into that.
Time Out
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Virginia Gay is bringing back Calamity Jane for an exclusive run at Sydney Opera House
If you had the good fortune of seeing theatremaker and all-out triple-threat Virginia Gay kick down the saloon doors and tear up the stage as Calamity Jane, then you'll immediately understand two things. Firstly, why Gay's gender-bending turn as the iconic frontierswoman is so joyously unforgettable. And secondly, you'll get why we're losing our minds over the announcement that Calamity Jane is coming back this October. 'I love the show, and I love what it does to people,' said Gay, speaking exclusively with Time Out about this exciting announcement. 'Audiences never stop asking for it – and sometimes, apparently, you should give an audience what they want!?' Packed with spontaneity and joy (and a load more queer subtext than you might expect from a show based on a real-life person who lived in America's Wild West era) this witty show sold out multiple seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and on tour after opening in 2017. The role also earned Gay the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress, enchanting audiences and critics alike – but stepping back into Calamity's cowboy boots is not something that she ever expected to do again. However, it was last year, when she was rehearsing a special one-off reprisal of the character for a fundraiser to celebrate ten years of the Hayes, that the spirit of 'Calam' was brought back to life. 'I said to Richard, god, you know, if I thought my knees could take it, I'd do this show again,' she said. 'And a week later, the Opera House called.' 'When we were doing the original seasons of Calam, the dream was always [to stage it in] The Studio at the Opera House, because we could convert the entire space into the Golden Garter… So when this call came a week after I said those immortal words, I was like, okay, I truly did not imagine going back to this character, but okay – one last go in the saddle,' continued Gay. Adapted from the beloved film starring Doris Day, this raucous yet intimate show should certainly scratch an itch for any theatregoers who fell in love with Gay's Boomkak Panto, which took over Belvoir St Theatre in the summer of 2021, as well as those of us holding out hope for a Sydney staging of Cyrano – Gay's gender-flipped take on the literary classic Cyrano de Bergerac, which has delighted audiences in Melbourne, Perth and abroad in London and Toronto. Collectively, Gay describes 'the lo-fi Joy explosion' of these shows as 'the confetti cannon trilogy'. 'I think both Boomkak and Cyrano were both hugely impacted by what I learned through Calamity. Like, what you can ask of an audience, and the way that you can be in liminal space. But at no point are you sacrificing the emotional truth of the characters or the weight of the twist, even while you are peppering people with jokes,' says Gay. 'That's, you know, one of the functions of laughter, to get people to take off their armor.' 'This is such a weird thing to say about a Wild West show, but I think our version of Calamity Jane is so uniquely Australian. It's got such an Australian sense of humor in it. It's got such irreverence, such mischief, it snubs its nose to authority.' This new staging of Calamity Jane will also feature an all-new cast, and Gay is excited to see what a new batch of actors will bring – but also, she's excited for the joy that an all new audience will get out of it. 'I think that joy is really important. Sometimes people think of it as as frippery, but I think actually, when the world is scary, joy is really fucking powerful, and joy that connects all sorts of audiences to a story like this is powerful. I think that is so wonderful, that a show can bring disparate generations and disparate world views together through joy. Nothing feels important in the show, but the act of joy, especially queer joy, is so valuable.' Calamity Jane is produced by One Eyed Man Productions in association with Neglected Musicals and Hayes Theatre Co. It will play exclusively at the Sydney Opera House from October 14 – November 16. Tickets start at $89+bf. Insiders presale starts 9am, Tuesday May 13; What's On presale starts 9am, Wednesday May 14; and General Public tickets are on sale from 9am on Friday, May 19. Find more info & book here.
The Herald Scotland
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A bitesize showcase of three wildly different plays
Tron Theatre, Glasgow Neil Cooper Four stars Take three plays, each around an hour in length, and all originally commissioned and performed at Glasgow's Oran Mor venue as part of the lunchtime phenomenon that is A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Then put them into the Tron's bijou Changing Room space with a trio of directors and a cast of three in a mini rep season of brand new productions and see what happens. The result in Studio3, an initiative introduced by the Tron's new artistic director Jemima Levick, is a bitesize showcase of wildly different work. Alright Sunshine is a monologue by Isla Cowan that sees police officer Nicky describes her life in a day patrolling Edinburgh's Meadows. As Nicky recounts her observations, her initially chatty portrait takes an increasingly dark turn as a seemingly minor incident over a Frisbee gives way to all too justifiable anger. Dani Heron is magnificent as Nicky in Debbie Hannan's tautly paced production. As she delivers Cowan's words, Heron exposes what women are up against in a world of institutional misogyny, domestic trauma and the very real dangers of life on the street. Read More: Calamity Jane at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Jocasta review: ferocious production for a Play, a Pie and a Pint Glasgow Film Theatre to celebrate Gene Hackman with mini-season FLEG sees director Dominic Hill revisit Meghan Tyler's wild cartoonish comedy set in Protestant East Belfast on the day the Queen dies. Here, Caroline and Bobby hold court in their red, white and blue bedecked home and garden, one of three very different environments created by designer Kenny Miller. As council employee Tierna attempts to lower all flags to half-mast, Caroline and Bobby defend its honour with exaggerated zeal. Bobby in particular sees his lager soaked fantasies personified as a pole-dancing temptress in a Union Jack mini dress. Jo Freer as Caroline and Kevin Lennon as Bobby strut the stage like a pair of Viz comic grotesques come to life, while Heron doubles up as Tierna and the Fleg with similar abandon. Fruitcake is the new title of Frances Poet's play formerly known as The Prognostications of Mikey Noyce. It charts the awkward reunion between life long friends Holly and Mikey after Mikey calls Holly following several years' silence seeking the return of a Maroon 5 CD. Holly isn't happy, especially as Mikey never showed up for her mum's funeral. But then, Mikey hasn't left the house since before lockdown, since when he has developed all manner of conspiracy theories that he has to tell the world. Levick's own revival of Poet's play taps in to the long term side effects of lockdown and the pains of confinement in a battily manic display of sparring between Freer as Holly and Lennon as Mikey. This s only interrupted by Heron as Cassie, the motor-mouthed old school friend of Holly who might just be able to sort things out. While all three plays could easily stand alone, Studio3 is nevertheless a welcome compendium that sees serious subjects dealt with in a variety of ways that showcases the glorious range of playwriting that exists right now.
