At first glance, “The Full Monty” is yet another movie-to-musical transfer, in this case adapted from an independent British caper movie from 1997 about a group of laid-off Sheffield steelworkers who organize a strip show to raise money and restore their dignity. If you’ve seen the movie “Calendar Girls” or the more recent musical “Kinky Boots” you’ve seen another version of much the same plot.
For years, I’ve reviewed this oft-revived 2000 Broadway musical as mediocre material, in part because I decided years ago that the decision to change the location to Buffalo, New York, while still closely following the movie’s screenplay meant that the story got stuck in mid-Atlantic nebulousness. It was always a fun, blue-collar show, filled with gags about the body insecurity of well-meaning, middle-aged men. But it’s never been seen as one of the best of populist contemporary musicals.
But on Sunday afternoon at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, I changed my mind about some stuff.
“The Full Monty” has a David Yazbek score; Yazbek went on to score “The Band’s Visit” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” shows more in his stylistic wheelhouse, and his music for “The Full Monty” tends to get overlooked. But sitting there Sunday at director Jim Corti’s production, I was reminded that it’s a beautiful song suite. “Breeze Off the River,” “You Walk with Me” and “You Rule My World” all are lovely, haunting melodies. “The Full Monty” is not all “Let it Go” and jiggling bellies. And if you look closely at Terrence McNally’s book, you see a moving dissection of masculinity, a clear-eyed and empathetic treatment of how the loss of the dignity of well-paying blue-collar work undermines self-esteem.
These days, producers would stick a few familiar pop songs into something like this. “The Full Monty” actually went a classier route, as hard as that may be to believe about a show about a Chippendales-like group of stripping steelworkers.
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I’d say this is a title ripe for one of those City Center reconsiderations, focused on the score, or maybe even a production by a radical director who could unpack its themes anew. And, yes, I’m talking about “The Full Monty.” On the one hand, you’d never write some of the politically incorrect lines therein today, let alone find a producer brave enough to stage them for the first time. On the other, time actually has been good to the piece. It takes a while for a high-quality score to establish itself as such.
Corti’s production is sufficiently honest to tease out all of these themes, not in a radical way but in a fashion that elevates the title and the characters. I’ve seen choreography for this show that mines every cliche going, but Tor Campbell mostly goes in a different, more exploratory direction, even if he can’t get any of his guys to walk up walls. There’s an emotionally resonant cast, led by Ben Mayne and Jared David Michael Grant and featuring (among others) Liz Pazik, Rebecca Hurd, Veronica Garza, Jackson Evans, Diego Vazquez Gomez, Bernard Dotson and Adam Fane, who dives deep here. And while Michelle Lilly’s set doesn’t always visually cohere, it mostly does the job. And, of course, you get to hear the full original orchestrations at Paramount, which is, I think, what moved me the most, given the quality of this music.
Sure, the marketing is all about baring it all and so on. But “The Full Monty,” if you see it done right as is the case here, strips away more than you might think.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “The Full Monty” (3.5 stars)
When: Through Oct. 6
Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Tickets: $38-$85 at 630-896-6666 and paramountaurora.com
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