Strip bead game

British "Calendar Girls" came to the Russians

This story spread around the world and was remembered by many - not from reports, but from the British film "Calendar Girls". And yet we repeat: the plot is absolutely documentary.

This story spread around the world and was remembered by many - not from reports, but from the British film "Calendar Girls". And yet we repeat: the plot is absolutely documentary.

In 1998, in a Yorkshire village, 50-year-old widow Angela Baker and her local Women's Institute friends (age range 40 to 70) released a nude calendar. Moreover, his own. The ladies had an extremely modest goal: in memory of John Baker, Angela's husband, who burned down in five months from lymphoma, to raise some money for the oncology department of the local hospital.

Their nude calendar blew Britain up. From Yorkshire Fair to Buckingham Palace, 88,000 copies were sold. A new John Baker wing has been built at Leeds Cancer Hospital. In addition, about 2 million pounds have been raised for the Leukaemia Research fund. Six gray-haired housewives, teachers, amateur artists from Yorkshire became national heroes.

A film about them was released in 2003. In 2009, Tim Fort, the film's screenwriter, turned his script into a theatrical play. Skillfully made, touching, human "heroic comedy" was staged in fifteen countries. In Russia, a non-repertory performance by the production company "Independent Theater Project" appeared on the stage. The director was the young actor of RAMT Alexander Ustyugov (a little earlier he staged “The Dawns Here Are Quiet…” in his theater). Desperate ladies from Yorkshire were played by experienced and well-known actresses: Marina Dyuzheva, Anna Kamenkova, Galina Petrova, Elena Biryukova, Alexandra Nazarova, Lyubov Matyushina, Tatyana Rudina.

In 2011, the Russian actresses involved in the play also released a calendar of a similar design. (By the way: they are the only ones, except for the English women, who did this.) All income from the sale of the calendar goes to help children with oncological and oncohematological diseases (more than 1 million rubles have been collected over 2 years). Part of the proceeds from tickets for Calendar Girls goes to the Life Charitable Foundation.

On February 18, the performance went on with a special enthusiasm: Angela Baker, Linda Logan, Trisha Stewart arrived in Moscow ... Five of the six Yorkshire prototypes of the heroines of the performance.

Calendar Girls opens with a catchy burlesque. But characters are molded and become visible in it: desperate, boyishly thin and determined Chris, the leader of this team (Galina Petrova); comically notorious, tightly wrapped in a cardigan, and even in a fur carnival costume of a rabbit, bespectacled Ruth with a neat "fig" on the back of her head (Marina Dyuzheva); tortured by the difficult life of a single mother in all latitudes, Cora (Lyubov Matyushina) is a beauty in all texture, who long ago put an end to herself. Their ridiculous and prim Women's Institute (a public organization created back in Victorian times to unite the mothers of families in provincial England) turns out to be an excellent form of “horizontal solidarity”. Everything is funny and everything is serious: the ladies are languishing at lectures “on the origin and historical evolution of the kitchen towel”; gritting their teeth, doing exotic gymnastics; tease each other; afraid of Lady Cravenshire's condemnation; they resolutely go naked into the photo studio, first emptying the scale of scotch tape for courage and covering their nakedness with freshly baked cupcakes, pots of seedlings or knitting (on the pages of the calendar they are engaged in cute old women's crafts ... Only that’s all “nude”).

The December page is a victorious chord of drums and brass! There, around the white piano, the whole British seraglio gathered. Lightly covered with a piano - and Santa hats.

In the hall - as you might guess - our ladies are sitting. Same age. Almost the same experience. And - as experience tells me personally - also, through one, in some way, the national heroines of their families. Hardly noticed and appreciated by the public (as the same experience suggests).

Women's Institute, overshadowed by the imposing shadow of Queen Victoria, we never had and never have. But there is something, invisible and informal. Otherwise, we would not have survived forty times.

- For women's friendship, girls! She will move mountains! - Muscovites drink martinis during intermission. They brush off the powdered sugar of the cakes from the weekend outfits and the floating mascara from the corners of the eyelids.

... In the fifth row of the stalls sit the Yorkshire "calendar girls". Gray-haired. Dressed in strict black dresses, enlivened by a single strand of beads. Older by 15 years after that heroic gesture. Occupied, according to them, more with work, families, gardens, paintings, than with an old moment of their glory (which does not prevent them from clearly supervising the "work" of the collected money).

They have lovely, clear, benevolent faces. Blue, lively, attentive eyes. Everyone in this company is a clear antipode of their compatriot Dorian Gray. They are quite suitable in the model of another calendar. Portrait. With the slogan: "After a certain age, everyone is responsible for his own face." And it seems that such a calendar would also be instructive.

And I would revive faith in the deep normality of people - like the whole history of their "striptease".

... To the predictable question: "How do you like the performance?" - they answer predictably: "Very, very ... But it is different from London ... It is Russian in tone, that's right ... It should be so ... " And finally, unable to resist, the famous models from Yorkshire exclaim vigorously:

- And then: your girls feel sorry for themselves! They are not very undressed on stage!