A Whip Cracking Musical Classic
Based on the 1953 musical film starring Doris Day, the musical of Calamity Jane has had many successful tours in the UK. Previous popular UK and Ireland tours had Barbara Windsor, Toyah Wilcox and most recently Jodie Prenger take on the role of the legendary frontierswoman. 2025 sees Carrie Hope Fletcher as ‘Calam’ in a Jamie Wilson Production, writes Christopher Peacock.
Calamity Jane, although based on the real life Martha Jane Canary, is a non-historical farce of a musical. In the sleepy frontier town of Deadwood the local theatre manager Henry Miller is promising the residents a performance from a top actress from the big city to put on a show. After miscommunication the actress hired is actually a male actor and it takes gun slinging Calamity and Wild Bill Hickok to control the baying crowd. Calamity over-promises in attempts to smooth things over and after being duped to hiring another actress who is not the big star advertised, she and Bill have to work on crowd control again.
What we see develop through the second act is a love-hate relationship between Bill and Calamity and serious envy when the new actress, Katie Brown, takes a liking to Calamity James crush, Lt Danny Gilmartin.
Carrie Hope Fletcher does excellently tackling the rambunctious Calamity. Not only adding venom to the snarky remarks, she does extremely well with all of the routines and impressive vocals – certainly in the crowd favourite song ‘Secret Love’.
Another key part of this production is the casting of Vinny Coyle as Wild Bill Hickok. Coyle matches the energy of Hope Fletcher and their chemistry serves the show well. Nick Winston’s co-direction and choreography of the hoedown impresses at what at times feels like quite tight staging.
The packed audience certainly enjoyed all this production had to offer with a fair few voices joining in with some of the more popular tunes. There is no attempt to modernise or adapt what may be seen as quite a dated show but this ‘Whip Cracking Musical Classic’ needn’t mind as there will be many more audiences who will be whole heartedly entertained.
New Wimbledon Theatre, The Broadway, Wimbledon, London, SW19 1QG until 17th May.
Booking and full details: https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/calamity-jane/new-wimbledon-theatre
