Posted on Wed, Oct. 28, 2009
The Ritz Theatre was wise to go with a production of
The Full Monty, based on the 1997 British film of the same name; this is simply an irrepressible musical. It has a blue-collar background that allows for roughness around the edges, and a book by Terrence McNally that gets beneath the well-worn skin of its formerly hard-working, currently hardly working subjects. Even David Yazbek's songs practically challenge you not to cheer on the six boys from Buffalo.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the former steelworkers drifting through town after their mill closes are exhaust-hose-in-the-car-window desperate (the song "Big-Ass Rock" may be musical theater's sole ode to assisted suicide).
Laid off, in danger of losing their homes, wives, possessions and children, all they have left is their dignity, and even that hangs by little more than a G-string. A traveling Chippendales-style show swings through town charging $50 a ticket, and the men decide to become Hot Metal - perhaps the least likely male strippers since Chris Farley danced with Patrick Swayze on Saturday Night Live - and go the full monty: take it all off.
So it's handy here that a certain level of professionalism can slip through the cracks (no pun intended) without doing too much damage. If W. Kris Clayton's Jerry Lukowski is completely out of his range on a song such as "Man," well, look, he's supposed to be a union guy, not a nightingale. Still, at some point the slippage must stop, and though director Al Fuchs coaxes genial performances out of his amateur cast, the production plays more like a discrete collection of labored, sloppy scenes than a comedy about unity through labor.
How sloppy does it get? There's just no excuse for Michael Anderson's flaccid rendition of "Big Black Man," and when a script includes spoken lines about leather undergarments and a tan, it's a major distraction to be presented with Lycra and a sallow torso. Also, Karyn Knox's musical direction and Suanne Reehms' vocal direction completely fail Susan Dewey, who, in the plum role of wizened old broad Jeanette Burmeister, alternately races ahead of or lags behind the band during "Jeanette's Showbiz Number." And, um, in the final scene, when all is laid bare, Chris Alberts' lighting is supposed to be a sudden audience-blinding, nudity-blocking effect. It isn't. I mean, it's cool and I can take it, but hey, just thought he'd want to know.
Fuchs can thank Matt Reher's and Brian Rivell's suicidal mama's boy Malcolm MacGregor and feisty Ethan Girard for adding much-needed commitment and spark to the production; they're as lively as the others are drab. But again, you have to darn near smother McNally's script to do too much harm, and though the Ritz's production is seriously flawed, the Buffalo boys' naked ambition still wins in the end.
The Full Monty
Playing at the Ritz Theatre,
915 White Horse Pike, Oaklyn. Through Saturday, Nov. 21. Tickets: $17 to $30.
Information: 856-858-5230 or www.ritztheatreco.org.
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