Skip to main content

Calamity Jane

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh 

Four stars 

 

Don’t mess with Calamity Jane. If you do, you’re likely to be shot down in a dramatic standoff you’ll never win. This is as true of any attempt at reworking Charles K. Freeman’s 1961 stage version of David Butler’s 1953 James O’Hanlon scripted movie as it is of the gal herself. As unreconstructed as this rootin’, tootin’ yarn concerning tomboyish Jane’s getting of wisdom remains, Freeman’s play is as faithful to its big screen roots as the assorted brides at the end of the play are to their various beloveds who look like they finally struck gold.

 

All this is driven by composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Paul Francis Webster’s wagonload of showtunes that have become sing-along classics. This is evident from the opening moments of this touring revival of Nikolai Foster’s 2014 production, first seen at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury. As a grizzled old cowboy plucks out a few notes on a banjo, it immediately prompts the audience to gently join in en masse with his cracked rendition of The Black Hills of Dakota.

 

This happens several times throughout the show after the curtain peels back to reveal the good folk of Deadwood playing along on a mini orchestra’s worth of instruments inside designer Matthew Wright’s all purpose barn with a miniature stage at its centre. As Carrie Hope Fletcher brings who she believes to be vaudeville star Adelaide Adams to town, all of Deadwood becomes starstruck over a showgirl who turns out to be Adelaide’s maid Katie Brown. As Calamity and Seren Sandham-Davies’ Katie shack up together, Vinny Coyle’s Wild Bill Hickok and Luke Wilson’s Danny come a courting, and after much line dancing around each other, happy endings ensue.

 

Foster and co-director and choreographer Nick Winston play things as straight as they can here, with Fletcher, Coyle and co keeping a lid on things while clearly having fun. This makes for an irresistibly infectious affair, with versions of The Deadwood Stage and Secret Love inspiring a sense of devotion from the audience. The various turns on Wright’s stage make Foster and Winston’s production a mini variety show in itself in a show that plays to its old-fashioned strengths even as Fletcher’s thoroughly modern Jane looks set to take on the world.


The Herald, April 17th 2025

 

ends

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more