Calamity Jane

Legendary frontierswoman; notorious daredevil; profane storyteller; unwomanly radical - CALAMITY JANE is one of the most immediately recognizable figures of the old American West.

From the famous 1950s Doris Day movie musical to the HBO series Deadwood, the courageous individuality of Calamity Jane has delighted audiences for decades. With a fierce disregard for gender expectations and cultural limitations that was centuries ahead of her time, there’s no better time to re-visit and re-examine this remarkable woman.

This stripped-back, rough-and-ready reimagining shucks off the buckskin and brings a barrelful of dirt and grit to the classic musical. Directed by Richard Carroll, the production stars Virginia Gay (Channel 7’s All Saints and Winners & Losers) as the magnetic, masculine heroine – joined by a ragtag band of acclaimed comedic actors and musicians who share all the other roles. From the moment they enter the theatre, audiences are immersed in the world of the Golden Garter Saloon – alive with whores, gamblers, and habitual jeopardy - and can expect an unruly and unpredictable ride. This particularly goes for the dozens of audience members seated onstage at saloon tables, who will be a part of the action whenever they least expect it!

Featuring timeless standards such as ‘The Deadwood Stage’, ‘Just Blew In From The Windy City’ ‘Black Hills of Dakota’, and ‘Secret Love’ performed with piano and a grab bag of other instruments, this production injects a unique and raucous sense of spontaneity into the world of musical theatre.

The Story of the Production

This Calamity Jane started life as a rehearsed reading for the Neglected Musicals program at Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney in 2016. As with all Neglected Musicals presentations, the cast and creative team had a single day of rehearsal, before presenting the entire show script in hand in front of an audience, with piano accompaniment. Born out of a long-standing love for the character and story shared by director Richard Carroll and star Virginia Gay, the Neglected Musicals presentations (7 performances in total at the 111-seat Hayes Theatre Co) sparked an awareness that the nature of the presentations (script in hand, cast seated at the sides of the stage, no lighting changes between scenes, etc) had enormous value to placing the story into a modern meta-theatrical context.

Following this idea, Carroll’s own production company One Eyed Man Productions went on to present a fully rehearsed and staged production of the show at the Hayes as part of the theatre’s 2017 season, where it opened to rave reviews, became a sell-out hit and won numerous awards. This production kept the single-piano accompaniment (augmented sporadically by instruments played by the actors, including guitar, ukulele, accordion, tuba and trombone), and placed audience members in the centre of the action by seating them onstage at tables, as patrons of the Golden Garter saloon. The action was staged around the audience, often involving audience members as a group or individually - including one audience member being recruited to portray ‘Joe the barman’ at each performance - and numerous meta-theatrical gags were added, or developed through the season. Each performance was capped off by a post-show ‘wedding reception’ in the theatre foyer, where the cast partied with the audience and took turns to perform country versions of modern pop songs, accompanied by one of the actors on piano.

Following its success at the Hayes, Calamity Jane was programmed the following year for a main stage season at Belvoir, a major theatre company in Sydney; and at the prestigious Arts Centre Melbourne, as well as for other touring dates in 2018. The show sold out at every venue it played, and was programmed for a return season at Arts Centre Melbourne. After the return season also sold out months before opening, an immediate commercial transfer to Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre was arranged, where the show played from Christmas 2018 through to February 2019 to sold-out houses and ecstatic audience reactions. By the Comedy Theatre season, the post-show ‘wedding reception’ had become a phenomenon of its own, and developed into a party in the alley beside the theatre, attended by hundreds of people every night.

Suitable for ages 7 and up

Warning: Contains simulated smoking, ukulele, and meta-theatrical devices