BWW Reviews: THE FULL MONTY at Village Theatre

Village Theatre launches its 2010-2011 season with the beefcake musical comedy, "The Full Monty".  And while the performers in the show have wonderful and rich voices, the show lacked any kind of energy, pace and heart.

Based on the 1997 film, the show follows the workers of a defunct steel mill in Buffalo.  They're out of work and desperate.  Jerry needs to make some money so he can keep seeing his son.  Harold needs to pay off the credit card bills his wife keeps piling up.  And Dave just wants to feel like the breadwinner again.  So when a male strip show comes through town and the ladies flock to it, Jerry gets the idea that if those guys can make money stripping, then so can they.  So he and some other out of work guys decide to become strippers for one night and pay off their bills.  Problem is none of them are the Chippendale type.  They're all just average ordinary guys with less than perfect bodies and a few years under their belts.  So to sell more tickets Jerry says that they are going "The Full Monty", meaning that they will bare it ALL.

The show is not a perfect one.  But despite its flaws it can be quite funny and charming and so much more than just a strip show.  The problem here is that director Jerry Dixon seemed to have forgotten that and just wanted the guys to take their clothes off.  The pace is slow and plodding and none of the actors were connecting with each other.  It seemed to be just so much listening for my next cue line and not listening to what my scene partner has to say and reacting accordingly.  And the lack of well developed characters in the show was shocking.  Most people on stage were just reading lines with little or no intention.  And in any show but especially a comedy, this is deadly.  So why attribute all of this to Dixon?  When a show is uniformly flawed as this one, really there is no one else to turn to but the director.  It was as if Dixon actually instructed the actors to pull back on any kind of character and to slow down and over enunciate each word for the sake of everything else.  Yes, we could hear everything they said, but so what when we've stopped caring about the relationships.

There were a few glimmers of hope.  There was a spark of a relationship between Ethan (Troy L. Wageman) and Malcolm (Michael Nicholas) but then it seemed glossed over.  Especially in the "You Walk With Me" number after Malcolm's Mother has passed away.  Here's where taking some time would have been nice but oddly enough here's where the pace was amped up and the moments where we could feel for these people and they could feel for each other was raced through.  It was as if Dixon was afraid of the relationships on the stage and this story is all about relationships.  Whether it is for spouses, lovers, friends or children, the relationships are the key to the heart of this story and they were nowhere to be found.  Especially with the two leads Jerry (Dane Stokinger) and Dave (Kevin High) who are about 75 percent of the show and I felt no connection between them at all.  There was no friendship on stage and I kept wondering why they were together.  The energy did pick up during the final number and finally the guys seemed to be having fun with each other but by then it was too late.

All in all "The Full Monty" came across as an excuse to have some flesh on stage and became a watered down version of itself.  I've seen many of these actors and Village put on much better shows than this so this is quite surprising.  Usually they go all out but for "The Full Monty" they only delivered a Quarter Monty.

"The Full Monty" plays at Village Theatre's Issaquah location through October 24^th and then it will move to their Everett location running October 29^th through November 21^st.  For tickets or information contact the Issaquah box office at 425-392-2202 or the Everett box office at 425-257-8600 or visit them online at www.villagetheatre.org.

Photo Credit: Jay Koh

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