REVIEW: The Full Monty (The Olympia, Dublin)

The original film version of The Full Monty, though hardly a classic of European cinema, had a certain something all of its own. Its Sheffield steel mills setting gave it an identity somewhere outside the bubble of American cinema. All of that has been stripped from the Broadway version of the story. Now, instead we have all the touchstones of homogenisation, backward baseball caps and basketball fans, big brand US cigarettes and beer carefully built into the action.

As some compensation for those sad and rather pathetic compromises comes a script and some songs that have heaps of polish, and a show that pushes the buttons with some dexterity. And even, on occasion, does more than that.

This time around the story of some out of work factory fellas and their bizarre git rich quick scheme, which involves working as strippers, is set in Buffalo New York. Spurred on by the six-pack sporting Jerry (Edward Baker-Duly) Dave (Simon Delaney) and the crew struggle with their besieged masculinity as they prepare to offer the women of Buffalo “The full Monty.”

And if that is the sort of thing that will have you buying tickets, the audience here do indeed get a butchers of the full block and tackle attached to the male leads. But more importantly, there are also enough raucous original songs to wipe away any memories of the film’s Hot Chocolate-stained Britsoul jukebox soundtrack. Delaney, in particular, delivers composer, David Yazbeck’s masterpiece, You Rule My World, a twisted love song to his own beer gut, with some gusto.

Add to the night’s entertainment some completely captivating “good bad” dancing (from Mark Asante), large helping of phallophobia, a tearful ballad to a dead mother, a nice turn from June Rogers and a gay subplot, and you have quite a package. Now if there were only some colloquial British expression that could really summon up a sense of such reckless plenitude…