15/04/25

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

As a kid, I was a little bit obsessed with Western movies and I still have a powerful recollection of sitting in a UK cinema, watching enthralled as Doris Day rode a stagecoach across a desert landscape belting out a stirring rendition of The Deadwood Stage. (Checking on the dates, I can see that I was only three years old when Calamity Jane was released, so clearly this was some time after that. I’m guessing I was maybe nine or ten.) When I hear that a touring version of the stage musical is coming to Edinburgh, I’m naturally eager to revisit it.

If Calamity (real name Martha Jane Canary) hadn’t actually existed, she’d seem an impossibly far-fetched invention: a cross-dressing stagecoach driver/gambler/gold prospector/rodeo star, she really did have a relationship with the legendary Bill Hickok, before going on to star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Adapted from Hames O’ Hanlon’s 1953 screenplay by Charles K Freeman and featuring songs by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, this is a rootin’ tootin’ barnstormer of a show, that has no higher ambition than to entertain an audience, an aim which it effortlessly achieves.

Carrie Hope Fletcher dons the buckskins to play the larger-than-life title role, attacking the more upbeat numbers like Windy City with absolute gusto and bringing a thrilling resonance to the show’s most enduring song, Secret Love. Tomas Wolstenholme handles the role of Wild Bill Hickok with panache and submits a lovely acoustic version of Higher Than a Hawk. There are assured performances from Samuel Holmes as effete song-and-dance man, Francis Fryer, and from Seren Sandham-Davies as Katie Brown, both of whom are victims of mistaken identity. But this is a true ensemble piece, with just about every member of the large cast ready and able to play an instrument at the drop of a stetson. This approach gives the show a propulsive energy that never falters, racing from one roistering set-piece to the next.

The episodic storyline is based around a series of misunderstandings, each perhaps too readily resolved by the indefatigable Calamity, but it would be hard to imagine a more downright enjoyable night at the theatre. Tonight’s packed audience rises to the occasion, clapping enthusiastically along to the final hoedown at a volume that threatens to blow the roof off the theatre. You could grumble that songs like A Woman’s Touch and Tis Harry I’m Planning to Marry are a tad reductive, but this piece is completely unapologetic about its origins and, apart from a few minor tweaks, sticks closely to the original screenplay.

I come out humming The Black Hills of Dakota; if you can manage to resist the impulse, then you’ve clearly got a lot more control than I have. If you’re looking for simple, unfettered fun, then why not mosey on down to the Festival Theatre where Calamity and her posse will be kicking up a storm every night until the 19th of April?

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney