Directed by Kat Elliott

In 1999, eleven members of a Women's Institute chapter in a small Yorkshire village decided to raise money for leukemia research. They did it by taking their clothes off.

When Annie's husband John dies, she and her best friend Chris set out to buy a decent sofa for the hospital waiting room where they spent his last weeks. The old one being, in Chris's professional opinion, an insult to grieving people everywhere. The W.I. usually raises funds with a calendar of local churches and bridges. Chris has a better idea: same calendar, same women, considerably fewer cardigans, everything strategically obscured by baked goods and flower arrangements.

What starts as a joke becomes a phenomenon. The calendar sells out. The press descends on the village. And six ordinary women find themselves famous, which turns out to be much harder on a friendship than getting naked ever was.

Written by Tim Firth, who also wrote the beloved 2003 film starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, Calendar Girls is warm, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving. It's a play about grief and gumption and the kind of women who hold a community together, and it closes our season with the biggest laughs and the fullest heart we've got.

Note: Nothing is actually revealed onstage. The famous photo shoot is staged with great care, great comedy, and strategically placed sponge cake.