Fun can be enough for ‘Full Monty’
The characters in “The Full Monty” lure their friends and neighbors to a show with the titillating will-they-or-won’t-they claim that they’ll bare all in an amateur strip show.
Truth be told, that’s how the musical works in real life, too — even down to the cheeky marketing campaign that shows six men holding, shall we say, strategically placed hats.
Florida Theatrical Association is the latest Central Florida group to present the musical, which ran two years on Broadway nearly two decades ago. “The Full Monty” was never a musical that was going to change the world, and FTA’s production doesn’t rise to the level of the organization’s very best work.
But director Kenny Howard and his crew have devised an entertaining evening that feels right at home in the cozy, clubby atmosphere of The Abbey.
Terrence McNally (“Ragtime,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!”) adapted a British story and set it in Upstate New York’s Buffalo. Six unemployed factory workers, with no decent prospects on the horizon, decide to put on a strip show to raise cash after the women they know go gaga for a touring Chippendales troupe. But these ordinary Joes — short, skinny, fat, old, bald, as the songs tell us — are far from your typical strippers.
Yes, it’s as silly as it sounds. But moments with heart — a trademark of both McNally and Howard — do occasionally peep through. After all, the underlying theme of the show is what it means to be a “real man,” a husband and a friend.
Despite the script’s name-dropping of Rochester, Ithaca and the Bills — fun for an Upstate boy like myself — none of the cast’s leading men is particularly believable as a blue-collar steelworker from that hardscrabble corner of the world. That creates an air of exaggerated staginess in the production, though Wendy Starkand has a great time with her over-the-top caricature of a crusty showbiz vet.
As the ringleader behind the male strippers, Brett McMahon is a likable enough goof-off. Tad Kincade injects some poignancy into Davy, his weight-conscious best friend. But when it comes to believability, it’s Morgan Howland-Cook who carries the day. As Davy’s romantic and fun-loving yet practical wife, every emotional note she plays rings true.
David Yazbek’s music — written long before his Tony-winning score for “The Band’s Visit” — is largely forgettable, though Blue Star’s athletically inspired choreography gives “Michael Jordan’s Ball” a lift. Interestingly, two most memorable songs — “BigAss Rock” and “Big Black Man — seem to have emerged from a time capsule. One is a humorous ditty about ways to commit suicide, the other plays off an enduring racial stereotype; in today’s more sensitive times would they even get written?
Yet laughing at them, in the silly context they are presented, enhances the sense that everyone’s being a little naughty, waiting for the pants to fly in an evening of harmlessly “forbidden” fun.