The Full Monty

as promised, my personal review of "The Full Monty - the musical", played in The English Theatre Frankfurt.

short summary of the storyline first: 6 jobless ex-steelworkers, who all worked in the now-closed-down factory together, decide to strip to earn some money. theyre all "normal people", so mostly not so great looking (although actually, i quite liked several of the guys...:D) which is kinda the charm of the whole thing. lots of ups and downs and emotional crisis, obviously. ends in a strip-show :)

now for the critique: one thing i simply must criticise is that the musical, written by an american i guess, has been rather americanised in comparison to the movie. including the jokes. and unfortunatly i feel the english dark humour is essential to the story, and so in that sense, the movie definatly beats the musical, by far, because the dialogues are just so much better. (although i must admit there were some good jokes i cant remember having heard before... my favorite: "well seeing the show would have killed her anyway" (one of the strippers talking about his very recently deceased mum))

also, although this is probably specific to this particular theatre: in the production i just saw, almost all actors where british, pretending to be americans, in the american version of a british film. i found that quite ironic, but also quite annoying. the result was a really weird mix of accents, depending on how good the actors were. not so great. ok, obviously a) we ARE in europe, and so british actors make sense, and b) admittedly, it's a mostly german audience, so really, you wouldnt expect people to notice. but in a so business-oriented town as frankfurt you can expect a reasonable amout of actual native-speakers, and for those... well i just found it annoying.

now for the positives: a) I LOVED the setting! as in, the stage design. so so clever, there was a conveyor belt in the ground of the stage, and on this belt chairs, tables, beds, anything, kinda rolled in and out depending on the scene! and in the cases where stagehands were needed they were dressed as factory workers, pushing stuff in and out. brilliant! especially cos the whole story is factory-orientated. absolutly genius, who ever designed it. im inspired. considering converting to stage design after my first degree in architecture (there is exactly one university in germany that actually does that, combine a degree in architecture with one in stage design - and thats in berlin! i love berlin!)

b) the end. obviously. those last 10 minutes where undoubtedly THE HIGHLIGHT of the show. and so anticipated. and really, really well done! i think the guys did a really really good job with the strip-show, and obviously the ladies in the crowd LOVED it. as did i! also, i think it was really really cleverly done. especially the end, obviously according to title, they end up doing "the full monty". but you only see their bits and pieces for a split-second, before the lights go out, and then you dont see anything. which i thought was really good, cos although obviously many woman probably tagged along for the naked men, really it was theatre, not a strip show. and they simply HAD to go all the way, because thats a major part of the story line, but by turning off the lights, i think everybody more or less kept their dignity. so well done on that. oh but the bit with the boxers in between? SO unnessesary. spoilt the fun a bit, i felt. but yeah, in general, great fun. i did feel rather like in a strip-show. and policeman-uniforms are simply never NOT sexy :)

conclusion: if youre a woman, go. men, its quite fun for you too. but maybe not quite as much as for the women. ;)