Stripped Bare

By Richard Zoglin

The Full Monty, the hit 1997 British film about unemployed steelworkers who put together a strip act to make money, was a charming, understated comedy spiced with terrific '70s music. Sex, songs, unemployment--well, two out of three ain't bad if you're looking for material for a Broadway hit. And, judging by the audience cheers and the giddy reviews, Broadway's new Full Monty seems likely to be one.

Go figure. The transition from screen to stage has buried most of the movie's charms. The setting has been switched from Sheffield, England, to Buffalo, N.Y., and the steel-girder sets are drably unmemorable. Instead of the film's catchy '70s hits (Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing), we have a new score by David Yazbek, whose lyrics ("cojones" rhymed with "what testosterone is") are marginally better than his generic, '70s-pop-with-a-hint-of-Sondheim music. Even the supposed showstoppers--a black man (Andre DeShields) sings of his endowments; a crusty pianist (Kathleen Freeman) celebrates her show-biz past--seem earthbound and underchoreographed.

Worse, Terrence McNally's book coarsens what the movie danced around so delicately: the notion that these beefy blue-collar guys would turn into Chippendales dancers to make a buck. There are enough penis jokes to fill a segment of the Howard Stern Show, and some of the new physical gags--one character keeps crashing into walls--look like outtakes from Carry On, Stripper. The result is a long slog to the famous last scene, where the boys get up in front of the town to take it all off. Which they do, in the clever high spot of a show that needs more of them. --By Richard Zoglin