"The Full Monty" at Theatre Theater

...or to be accurate: as co-produced by Theatre 7 and Mercury Theatre Productions.

Let me come out and say from the get-go that I really love David Yazbek's work in general, so I was already well inclined to love this show, as I loved the original British film about a bunch of out of work men in an industrial town who band together to make money doing one night of see-all stripping and end up changing their lives in really positive ways.

Which is why I am so torn about this production.

Without banging the drum, it basically came off to me like really solid community theatre: all the energy and earnestness(and all the obvious self-appreciation) a group of humans can harness, but not all the talent necessary to tell a story on a stage.

Let me start with the stuff I liked: Lauren Blair's choreography was simply terrific. Deceptively simple, but really effective, and it always seemed to fit in with the characters. And some of the performances were great fun. In spots. Which describes the show as a whole: pretty much everyone had their moments. And the band was tight, if poorly mixed.

But what really sunk this production was Kristie Rutledge's utterly inadequate direction. Her staging of the action was good, but she--like so many directors of musicals--seem to think that that's all you need: tell the actors where to stand. What they forget is that ultimately the ONLY thing the audience wants to care about is the characters. The cast of this production all seem to be in different shows. Some were talking out to the audience with every line, some were performing for a camera, some were performing for a 800-seat house. But few of them were doing anything approaching playing the scenes they were in. They were playing emotions, they were playing moments, they were playing jokes. But none of them were actually attached to the story--the single most important job of the director. So there were lots of wonderful moments, but without being integrated emotionally into the story there was no story arc and the result is that the moments in between the great moments were all pretty painful to watch.

Add to this the lesser sin of Bill Wolfe's not nearly as poor--but problematically very similar--musical direction. A couple of the lead actors just couldn't sing their roles effectively. And by this I mean they either didn't have the voices or they didn't cover their inability to sing with stronger acting choices. A really good music director knows how to get those almost-singers to the place where what you THINK you're hearing is great singing, when in fact it's really just great performing. (Rex Harrison is the uber-obvious example of this.) Like with the rest of the show, there are moments when the singing just clicks and all of a sudden it's BANG! POW! exciting. But then the rest of the show takes over and you're back to mediocreville. And sadly that's MOST of the show.

The technical elements here all worked well: lighting by Chris Singelton, costumes and set by committee (I guess, since there was no credits I could find) all worked quite well, which for better or worse did not distract from the cast.

The story is such fun, the music and lyrics just NEAT, and they certainly came at it with great energy, so it was hard to not be at least entertained. But all-in-all it was a cotton-candy night. In other words: simply not a full enough Monty.

Bottom line: B- (A- for effort, C for execution).

'Til next time!
--HDSQ