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Buffalo’s out-of-work steel workers aren’t feeling so hot lately. They’re broke, and they have nothing to do but the dishes. Jerry (Chris Austin) can’t pay his child support. Dave (Mark Dils) nurses his ego — and his girth — with potato chips, and doesn’t feel worthy of sexual relations with his wife. And the town’s (pointedly working) women, including Jerry’s ex Pam (Cookie Eldridge) and Dave’s wife Georgie (Katherine Davis), have all just shelled out big money to watch a sculpted gay man named Keno (Steven Riley, fully meeting corporeal expectations, and with great acerbic delivery, too) strip down to a thong and then pull a cell phone out of it. There’s only one way for Buffalo’s men to take all this on, says Jerry, in Terrence McNally’s The Full Monty, directed by Joyce A. Presutti for the Portland Players, and that is by taking things off.
Jerry’s band of reluctant strippers assembles gradually. First, he and Dave rescue young Malcolm (Derrick Jaques) from poisoning himself in his red sedan. Then, they crash a Latin dance class, and conveniently find that the star pupils are Howard (Phil Moss), their old boss from the mill, and his wife Vicki (Cynthia O’Neil), who believes that her husband is still employed. After a little blackmail gets Howard on board, they hold auditions, snagging Ethan (Rodney Mondor), whose greatest endowment is in neither singing nor dancing, wink wink; and Horse (Lowell Jeffers), an older black man who provides, as Jerry and Dave see it, the race fantasy element. So they’ve got a crew. Now they just need to learn show business. Luckily for them, the stage-weathered, joint-toking pianist Jeannette (KoKo Keller, all attitude) shows up from retirement to needle the guys along.
It’s an entertaining and sometimes gleefully crass process, punctuated by some great songs. A good one is “Michael Jordan’s Ball,” in which Jerry is inspired to have the guys learn to dance using the common idiom of basketball moves, and although this show does have a few obligatory yawner earnest numbers, Yazbek’s better lyrics include some really funny, tongue-in-cheek stuff. “Big-Ass Rock,” for example, is a send-up of all those “You’ve Got a Friend”-type songs, and is Jerry and Dave’s musical vow to help depressed Malcolm kill himself any way they can. I’m also fond of the exultant “Big Black Man,” which is sung as the audition piece of Horse, and is exactly what it sounds like (“Ain’t nothing in the world” like one!). Choreography could be a little more ambitious in some of these numbers, but is certainly adequate, and most of the production’s voices are fabulous, particularly Austin as Jerry and Jaques as Malcolm. Unfortunately, they’re often embattled by the volume of the seven-piece pit band, which is excellent but not balanced well with the stage levels.
As the men learn how to shake their asses and form a straight line, parallel challenges take place back in the real world, with the domestic situations of their lives. Jerry struggles to keep his son Nathan (Caleb Shomaker, endearingly) from being whisked away from him by Pam and her nerdy boyfriend Teddy (Mike Best, who entertains in a number of ensemble roles). Dave’s wife is feeling dangerously rejected by his dejection. Howard’s wife continues to expect $80 face cream and vacations in Puerto Rico. The cast fosters great rapport among the guys, especially between Jerry and Dave, and some engaging character work (Malcolm and Horse, particularly).
