Calamity Jane

Milton Keynes Theatre

29th July 2025

One of the big hitters of the “Golden Age” of Hollywood musicals, ‘Calamity Jane’ was actually written as a response to the similarly-themed ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ which had brought MGM significant success several years earlier, and Warner Brothers wanted a gunslinger of their own. The 1953 film saw Doris Day playing the feisty Calamity, and a stage version followed in 1961 with additions to its score (which supposedly were written for the film but omitted). The show is back to crack some whips following the last UK tour with Jodie Prenger back in 2014, this time with Carrie Hope Fletcher firing the shots, and plays Milton Keynes Theatre this week.

In Deadwood City, peacekeepers Wild Bill Hickock (Vinny Coyle) and Calamity Jane (Fletcher) do their best to keep the local residents in line, and find themselves having to help out Henry Miller (Peter Peverley), the local saloon owner. Miller has advertised the appearance of famous actress Frances Fryer to perform at his establishment, but confusion has led to the arrival of a man named Francis Fryer (Samuel Holmes) instead. When passing Fryer off in drag fails to fool the locals, Calamity offers to go to Chicago to ask pin-up Adelaid Adams (Mollie-Grace Cutler) if she’ll perform, but a case of mistaken identity sees Calamity bringing back Adelaid’s maid Katie Brown (Seren Sandham-Davies) instead. Once Katie performs, affections are won in several unexpected places, not least for Calamity and Wild Bill.

‘Calamity Jane’ shares so much of its DNA with ”Annie Get Your Gun’ that it’s very easy to get them muddled, but the latter had Irving Berlin’s mighty score behind it, which Calamity’s composers Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster don’t quite match. It does however remain a tuneful listen, with the upbeat crowd-pleasers in the first act and the gentler romantic stuff later on. It all fares better than the thin archaic book (Ronald Hamner and Phil Park), during which everything happens exactly as you expect it to and characters are more like caricatures. Many “Golden Age” musicals suffer the same fate in their storytelling, and while it’s no bad thing when viewing the show as a product of its time, there are some very outdated attitudes towards women and clunky lines of dialogue that actually provoked groans from the audience on press night. But this is meant to be frothy stuff, with most audiences just waiting for the next tune, and in that ‘Calamity Jane’ is a fine show for the ears, if perhaps not the brain.

It might be old-fashioned hokum but director Nikolai Foster really leans into that Southern charm and captures the “leather and sawdust” feel of the piece (helped by Matthew Wright’s effectively-distressed set design). Pacing is swift and snappy, the scenes never feeling too drawn out before the next song, and Foster has wisely cast this production as “actor/musician”, meaning many of the ensemble play their own instruments, lending a real feeling of authenticity to the saloon scenes and energy to the hoedown which is brilliantly done (choreography by Nick Winston).

Carrie Hope Fletcher is a ballsy Calamity, just hammy enough without becoming pantomime, and looks like she’s enjoying herself. Fletcher gets to dance more here than she normally does which is lovely to see, and the voice remains strong, belting to her usual standard with the oscar-winning “Secret Love” a highlight. Vinny Coyle is suitably dashing and swarthy as Wild Bill Hickok, again very nimble on his feet and also putting a fine voice to good use with “Higher Than A Hawk” and the duet “I Could Do Without You”, well-performed with Fletcher. Samuel Jones is great fun as Francis Fryer, Seren Sandham-Davies a delight as Katie, and Mollie-Grace Cutler makes a striking impression in her all-too-brief appearance as Adelaid Adams, savage of tongue and ice-cold delivery that hopefully mean some villainous femme fatales in her future. 

A dose of nostalgia for those of a certain age, ‘Calamity Jane’ doesn’t do much to win over new audiences but it’s still a whimsical if unchallenging way to spend a couple of hours, with some fine performances to boot, even if it doesn’t quite hit the bullseye.

‘Calamity Jane’ runs at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday 2nd August 2025 before continuing on its UK tour until September.

Performance runtime 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Details at:

https://www.atgtickets.com/venues/milton-keynes-theatre

https://calamityjanemusical.com/#tour-dates