‘Full Monty’ or Not, It’s a Crowd-Pleaser

At the risk of seeming terribly crass, we must fulfill our consumer-guide function and report, upfront, that there is no discernible frontal nudity in “The Full Monty.” True, there are also insufficient charms and infrequent bursts of wit--just as there are good actors and a promising new composer-lyricist named David Yazbek--in the crowd-pleasing musical that opened Thursday night at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre after a sold-out run at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

But this $7-million adaptation of the endearing little 1997 British movie has been peddling the flesh angle in all its publicity and spends much of its evening in sniggery anticipation of the moment when six blue-collar guys will reveal more in their amateur Chippendale routine than the strategically placed hats and butts that close the film.

The musical characters--unemployed now in Buffalo instead of Northern England--do drop the hat trick for an instant, but, gosh, the big finish is lost in a blinding blast of backlighting. In a time when theater nudity is almost as routine as overamplification and overpriced tickets, we are shocked to find that “The Full Monty,” of all projects, puts the tease back in stripping and the shame back in body-consciousness. Shows don’t get in trouble for indecent exposure anymore, but couldn’t there be some punishment for pandering?

Basically, the innocence has been lost in translation from the sweet movie sleeper about low funds and low self-esteem among men in a depressed British milltown, and their scheme to change their situation by putting on a strip show.

The characters could be from Depressed Town, USA, generic home of the whimsically unemployed. John Arnone’s sliding scenery has Freudian smokestacks blurred by sentimental-looking smog and Robert Morgan’s costumes patronize blue-collar women with a mishmash of ‘60s fringe and ‘70s big back-combed hair.

Director Jack O’Brien and author Terrence McNally have stuck fairly close to the outlines of the screenplay. The difference--besides Yazbek’s confident and frequently disarming pastiche of pop songs--is the production’s tone, which too often gives us coarseness as if it were honesty, and juvenile sexuality in place of childlike celebration of raunch.

We are treated to two urinal scenes, and so much effort is expended to establish the heterosexual butchness of the show that the main character, a slacker divorced dad named Jerry (Patrick Wilson), is perilously close to being too unlikably homophobic to carry the show. All six men, however, have been cast with a sensitivity we wish had been included in more of their material. Except for the suave Broadway veteran Andre de Shields as the aging African American hoofer, deceptively called Horse, the actors are relative newcomers. Most endearing is John Ellison Conlee as the overweight and undersexed Dave, who lies next to his wife (Annie Golden) but sings “You Rule My World,” a woozily wounded love ballad, to his stomach: “You grumble and I stumble/toward the Muenster cheese.”

Conlee and Wilson also join Jason Danieley’s suicidal Malcolm in “Big-Ass Rock,” the number that, halfway into the first act, suddenly makes us sit up and appreciate the possibilities in Yazbek’s quirky, take-no-prisoners humor. Yazbek dives into “Poor Judd Is Dead” territory here with a mordant parody of you’ve-got-a-friend songs. He can also rhyme bonus, cojones and testosterones. And he can write serious, as he does in “Scrap,” the men’s lament in the union hall to the beat of folding chairs being snapped shut, and move easily into Latin show music with “Life With Harold,” a cha-cha for the materialistic wife (Emily Skinner) of the former boss (Marcus Neville). Yazbek is so good at edgy genre spoof, in fact, that his attempts at serious poignance--”Breeze off the River” and a love song from left field for closeted gay guys (Danieley and Romaine Fruge) seem like parodies of manipulative pop sops. Also dragged in, with more success, is a new character, an old show-biz pianist and repository of old show-biz humor, played by veteran actress Kathleen Freeman. Choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who has even made Drew Carey dance, knows how to get non-dancers to move without losing their heavy-footed sweetness.

What we did not expect, however, is the book’s heavy-handedness. In the film, one guy slams once into a wall while trying to replicate Donald O’Connor. On Broadway, he slams into walls for the entire evening. We are told, over and over, that “desperate times need desperate measures,” and, every time he hits the wall, the show does too.

* “The Full Monty,” Eugene O’Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St., New York. Telecharge: (800) 432-7250.

Linda Winer is chief theater critic at Newsday.