I'm a Calamity, get me out

In 1953, Doris Day briefly laid aside blonde perfection and doeeyed domesticity to play Calamity Jane, a Wild West tomboy with little dress sense and rather more aggressive motives than Mae West for asking a man if he had a gun in his pocket.

Now Toyah Willcox smears fake mud on her face to become the bullish cowgirl with a bullet habit, presumably hoping to attract better reactions than "She's a calamity, get me out of here!"

Calamity Jane was devised by Warner Brothers as a retort to MGM, which won enthusiastic audiences in 1950 with its film of the popular Western musical Annie Get Your Gun. However, the somewhat naive charm of the thigh-slappin' gun-totin' original has dissolved in a production reeking of gingham and lukewarm feminism, which does not have enough tongue-in-cheek humour to carry off Calamity's transition from bar-brawling man-fighter to petticoatwearing man-eater.

When Willcox emerged from I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! she said: "I enjoyed not bathing, I enjoyed not changing my clothes and I enjoyed just getting muddy." She could have been describing the lifestyle of the woman behind her character - a 19th century tomboy who joined the army, became a scout for General Custer and led a harddrinking existence, sleeping under wagons, camping out in fields, and lurking in men-only bars.

It would be easier to imagine her playing the historical figure than the more sentimental caricature in the musical, not least because 21st century audience members would not have to deal with the scene where Calamity Jane discovers the joys of housekeeping.

The song A Woman's Touch is the lowest point, in contrast to the sub-Cole Porter but nonetheless amusing number where Calamity and her soon-to-be love Wild Bill Hickok (does that make her a Hickok Blonde?), hurl such simmeringly intimate insults at each other as "In the Christian/You're the why/In the ointment/You're the fly". All right, it's not wordplay at its most sparkling - and perhaps this is the real problem: despite Ed Curtis's lively direction and Sammy Fain's catchy tunes, the script is not nearly sharp enough for Calamity Jane to be admired either as a period piece or as a retro-classic.

As a result, the production lives or dies by Willcox's performance, an unfortunately forced twodimensional affair, which drags the audience through the dust of a quest, first to bring an actress who's all fibs and fishnets to entertain the men of Deadwood, and then to win a man who can deal with the fact that Calamity is the kind of wife who's happier to whip up a fight than a pudding.

Despite Willcox's pop-singing background, other members of the cast shine more as vocalists - Michael Cormick, in particular, as Wild Bill Hickok, has a voice that could have been matured in a whisky barrel.

Calamity Jane may have been better off sticking to her guns, but the producers should bite the bullet and concede that this is little more than a dated romp though the not-so-wild West.

Calamity Jane