Julie Goodyear, Janie Dee & More to Join London Hit Calendar Girls

Julie Goodyear and Janie Dee are among the actors headed for the hit London comedy Calendar Girls beginning November 3 at the Noël Coward Theatre. The new cast will play for 10 weeks, through January 9, 2010, when Calendar Girls will move to an as-yet unnamed new theater. Tim Firth’s play, adapted from his 2003 screenplay, opened on April 4, directed by Hamish McColl.

Goodyear (Coronation Street) will make her stage debut as Cora/Miss July. Dee (Comic Potential) will play Annie/Miss February. Also joining the cast are Kelly Brook as Celia/Miss September, Helen Lederer as Marie, Debbie Chazen (Doctor Who) as Ruth, Arabella Weir (The Fast Show) as Chris/Miss October, Jan Leeming as Lady Cravenshire and Rob James Collier (Coronation Street in his London stage debut as the photographer Lawrence.

Calendar Girls is based on the true story of a group of middle-aged women who posed naked for a calendar to raise money for charity. The stage version, produced by David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, donates its normal £1.50 booking fee on each ticket sold to Leukemia Research, plus a percentage of merchandise sales and royalties. More than £150,000 has been raised for the fund thus far.