It has been nearly 25 years since a naked Gary Barlow and his Take That bandmates had jelly and cream dolloped over them for the video to go with their first single, Do What U Like. “It’s all been downhill since we started wearing clothes,” he joked as he revealed details of a new foray into comical nudity – a musical version of the film and stage play Calendar Girls, which is to have its world premiere in Leeds.
Barlow’s production, called The Girls, was revealed on Sunday in the area where it all started, when the singer met the original “girls” at Burnsall Village Hall, North Yorkshire.
In 1998, Tricia Stewart first suggested that Rylstone Women’s Institute do a nude calendar to raise money to buy a sofa for the hospital where the husband of her friend and fellow WI member Angela Baker was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Yes, they would be naked but strategically placed cakes and flowers would protect their modesty.
The women became a media sensation and their very British story became first a film starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters and then a stage production which has twice toured the UK. Almost £4m has since been raised for leukaemia and lymphoma research.
Barlow joined the project as a result of his nearly 30-year friendship with Tim Firth, writer of the screen and stage play.
At the launch the singer joked that the nudity was “the only reason I wanted to be part of the show. I want to look at women with no clothes on”.
Barlow and Firth attended a rehearsal of the show in Burnsall on Sunday. Barlow told the Yorkshire Post that the intimate setting was important. “We always said, if we can’t play this in a village hall we shouldn’t put it on a stage. If it has to rely on a big production and lights and a big band we shouldn’t be writing this. It has to exist with a piano and some people on stage. And we’ve done it.
“It’s about a little place where there’s mums, dads, brothers, sisters, kids ... That’s what the story’s about. We’ve got to make the theatre feel like this, as intimate as this.”
The show will get its world premiere at Leeds Grand Theatre on 14 November before transferring to the Lowry Centre in Salford in January.
Before the world sees The Girls there will be another Barlow musical theatre project. The singer has written the music and lyrics for the upcoming Harvey Weinstein-produced Broadway show Finding Neverland, which tells the story of JM Barrie and his relationship with the family that inspired Peter Pan.
