TOUCHED by the pen of Tim Firth, the everyday becomes something significant.

The Wirral-born playwright has a knack of drawing out what is unusual in people’s lives, while at the same time reminding the audience of how much they have in common with what is happening on stage.

In a scene in Calendar Girls, the women take it in turns to read letters sent to them by others who have lost a loved one to cancer.

It’s a poignant moment, not just because it highlights how one Women’s Institute branch touched thousands of people across the world, but because every single person in the theatre was thinking about someone they know who had died of the disease, or had survived it, or who they would be devastated to see develop it.

It’s a show full of poignant moments – about friendship, determination and hope; about loss in many forms; about the importance of acceptance; about knowing when to let go.

But it also offers plenty of humour, as the six friends and WI members decide to pose nude for a calendar to raise money to buy a settee in the visitor’s waiting room of the local oncology ward.