Playwright: Terrence McNally;
Score: David Yazbek
At: Marriott Theatre,
10 Marriott, Lincolnshire
Phone: 847-634-0200; $45-$55
Through Sept. 21
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Are the Marriott Theatre's largely suburban audiences ready for a show that is essentially an evening-long cock tease? More importantly, do the stripper guys of the Marriott's The Full Monty actually show the full monty?
Let's just say that these questions are best answered on your own, since that would spoil the surprises of the Marriott Theatre's knockout Full Monty. ( One surprise is seeing reactions of elderly audience members to the show's slew of dick jokes. )
The Full Monty started as a British indie film hit from 1997 that garnered multiple Academy Award nominations. Three years later, it became a Broadway musical, courtesy of out playwright Terrence McNally ( Master Class, The Ritz ) and first-time legit composer David Yazbek ( Dirty Rotten Scoundrels ) .
Though many condemn the recent trend of creating stage musicals that rely on famous movies titles to lure audiences, The Full Monty showed how the commercial transformation could be infused with wit and panache. It even survived its transplant from northern England to Buffalo, N.Y.
The plot is simple. Divorced and out-of-work steel worker Jerry Lukowski ( KC Lupp ) needs to raise money fast to keep shared custody of his son. So Jerry assembles a ragtag group of guys to appear in a fundraising strip show, where they promise bear all.
Where the complexity ( and a lot of humor ) comes in is with the guys' nervousness about their body image, ranging from age and race to the sizes of their protrusions. More so than most musicals, The Full Monty explores issues in modern American relationships like child custody, overspending and the stress a couple experiences when the breadwinner roles are reversed.
The topicality makes The Full Monty easy to identify with, as does the superlative cast assembled by director/choreographer Marc Robin. There isn't a weak link in the Marriott ensemble, which is also blessed with a few veterans from Full Monty tours like Milton Craig Nealy ( a singing and dancing dynamo in Noah 'Horse' Simmons' number 'Big Black Man' ) and Joe Coots ( an expert with his comic smart-ass retorts as Jerry's overweight friend, Dave Bukatinsky ) .
Lupp brings an affable naturalistic bravado to Jerry, which contrasts with cast members like Stephen Schellhardt's Malcolm and Michael Gerhart's Harold, who both played things a tad too broadly for my tastes. ( Nonetheless, the audience ate up all their nervous exaggeration. ) Schellhardt also teams nicely with Jason W. Shuggler's spacey Ethan for the show's underwritten and underplayed gay-romance subplot.
One person who guarantees a laugh is Alene Robertson's showbiz veteran piano player, Jeannette Burmeister. Her seen-it-all, blasé attitude is an asset to Marriott's fabulous Full Monty. It may not be a show for the ages, but The Full Monty is great for a girls'-night-out party, and allows guys to get in touch with their touchy-feely sides.