In 1968, Broadway was aghast (and titillated) when a tribe of hippies went naked in Hair. Thirty-two years later, a handful of unemployed steel workers strip down to nothing onstage in The Full Monty and it is practically family entertainment.
OK, I guess it depends on the family, but if you have a taste for untoned, scrawny, fat or aging bodies, then The Wick Theatre has the show for you. Based on the Oscar-nominated British film of the same name — yes, the title is slang for “stark naked” — the musical Americanizes the story, but also ups the emotional quotient in telling of the unusual path these guys take towards self-esteem.
Adapter Terrence McNally changes the setting to Buffalo, N.Y., a fertile target of jokes, and pop composer David Yazbek makes his musical theater debut with a satisfying rock score loaded with brash, testosterone-rich lyrics.
Single dad Jerry Lukowski gets the idea to earn quick cash going Chippendale, to be able to retain custody of his son. So he auditions other fellow workers from the shuttered mill, virtually all dance-challenged, but they gradually learn the moves for their climactic moment of truth.
The show needs to move with a cinematic pace and it does, thanks to director Dom Ruggiero of New York’s Gateway Playhouse, the same place the serviceable metalwork set comes from. At least as important is the choreography, handled by Andy Fiacco, who manages to make the sad sack six look clumsy early on, then brings them up to speed with comic bumps and grinds in the finale.
Together the former steel workers form a tight-knit ensemble; five of the six are Actors Equity members. Reggie Whitehead has done the show numerous times, a standout as the black man with an anatomical secret. JP Sarro is the token butterball, who gets to sing a number to his overhanging stomach. Alex Jorth and Regan McLelland are lost souls who discover they have more in common than a mutual love of show tunes. And Leslie Anne Wolfe gets most of the good lines as the group’s seasoned rehearsal piano player, punching them — and the audience — into submission.
The Full Monty has a lot of recommend it, for men and women alike. Sure, there is the promise of male nudity, as well as a lot of guy gags if the former does not float your boat.
THE FULL MONTY, The Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, March 23. Tickets: $58. Call: (561) 995-2333.
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Love is not reserved only for the young and it is never too late to reach out to the love of your life. Those are among the themes of Israel Horovitz’s latest play, Fighting Over Beverley, but if that sounds like he has succumbed to sentimentality then you do not know this pioneering playwright of the off-Broadway movement.
The title character, now pushing 70, was a British-born teen during World War II when she got engaged to her first love, an RAF fighter pilot named Archie. But Beverley proved fickle and soon became smitten instead with a Yank pilot called Zelly, whom she married and spent her life with in Gloucester, MA. Now, however, 52 years later, Archie shows up on her doorstep and declares his intention of taking her back with him to England.
Gloucester has been the setting of many of Horovitz’s plays, but the locale is less important this time than the triangular tug-of-war. To leave one’s husband is a momentous decision for Beverley’s generation, while her daughter Cecily does it all the time. A successful talent agent in Los Angeles, Cecily has just left her third mate and arrives at her childhood home just as Archie has made his pitch for Beverley. Cecily takes an instant dislike to Archie, but then she does not much care for her father either.
As Cecily, Erin Joy Schmidt is a worthy stand-in for the audience, but the production belongs to Sandra Shipley as Beverley. She underplays the role expertly, particularly in the early going, but comes on strong afterwards as Beverley gains confidence and sees her options widening. Paul O’Brien gets the underwritten role of Zelly, which asks him to convey his character largely through silent scowls. In contrast, Dennis Creaghan’s Archie is gregarious and happy-go-lucky, though not always politically correct.
Florida Stage veteran Richard Crowell contributes a crackerbox house set that fits cozily on the Theatre at Arts Garage stage. It has been five years since Horovitz began working with Florida Stage, the precursor of Arts Garage, and three years since the Manalapan company first read Fighting Over Beverley in public. It is a fruitful collaboration of like-minded artists, as this involving, thoughtful play attests.
FIGHTING OVER BEVERLEY, The Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach. Through Sunday, March 23. Tickets: $30-$45. Call: (561) 450-6357.
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With a first-rate creative team of composer Charles Strouse, lyricist Stephen Schwartz and book writer Joseph Stein, as well as a story line about Jewish immigrants settling on New York’s Lower East Side, 1986’s Rags was a can’t-miss musical.
So of course it became one of Broadway’s most spectacular flops, lasting a mere four performances before abruptly folding. But such is the show’s pedigree that efforts have been made over and over to revive and revise the show. Producer Alan Jacobson gave Rags its statewide premiere at West Palm Beach’s Florida Jewish Theatre in the mid-1990s and he now returns to the show with a production that features a newly commissioned script at his Plaza Theatre in Manalapan.
It would be great to announce that the show’s problems have finally been solved and this quasi-sequel to Fiddler on the Roof is now a satisfying evening of theater. Bur regardless of the tinkering and rewriting efforts, Rags remains an overstuffed, unfocused hodge-podge.
At the center of this sprawling tale is Rebecca Hershkowitz (Melissa Boher Jacobson), who arrives at Ellis Island with her young son, expecting to see her husband Nathan (Randy Charleville) who preceded them to America. But he is busy working his way up the political ladder by erasing his Jewish roots, and will not show up until the end of the first act.
By then, Rebecca will have a job in a garment sweatshop and will have attracted the eye of a union organizing rabble-rouser named Saul (James Cichewicz). Also vying for audience attention is a girl named Bella (Sheira Feuerstein), whose stern father forbids her to work outside their tenement home and he certainly wants her to have nothing to do with Ben (Michael Westrich), an ambitious, but irreligious go-getter.
There is a way to juggle so many characters and plot threads, but Stein did not manage it and Richard Sabellico’s newer script is not a substantial improvement.
Strouse wrote some lovely melodies for Rags, although the nicest song, a bluesy tune called “Blame It on the Summer Night” sounds out of tone with the rest of the score.
Director Andy Rogow and choreographer Kevin Black do what they can with the large, largely amateur cast, but their efforts are as overambitious as the show itself is. The ethnic story will probably still attract an audience, but what awaits them on the Plaza Theatre stage is strictly rag-tag stuff.
RAGS, The Plaza Theatre, 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan. Through Sunday, March 16. Tickets: $45. Call: (561) 588-1820.
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There is something about a gaggle of nuns that is inherently funny, particularly when they encounter a sassy nightclub singer and a bunch of two-bit goons. That is the formula that generated the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie comedy Sister Act and the subsequent stage musical, playing this week at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.
If you squint, you can sort of make out the plot outline of Some Like It Hot. Here, in soul-funk Philadelphia of the ’70s, it is nightclub singer Deloris Van Cartier — right, not her real name — who witnesses a murder by her thug boy friend. Fearing for her life, she hides in a convenient nearby convent, masquerading as Sister Mary Clarence.
There she butts heads with the Mother Superior, who tries to keep her busy by assigning her to improve the less-than-joyful noises coming from the tone-deaf nuns’ choir. At this, Deloris succeeds all too well, turning the sisters into sistahs, boogieing to the oldies — the very oldies — which not only attracts new congregants, but donations and the media. Alas, the media also attracts the goons and Deloris is soon back in jeopardy.
If nothing else, the story is sufficient inspiration for composer Alan Menken and his sometime collaborator, lyricist Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid), who come up with some hot tunes with vaguely religious overtones (“Take Me to Heaven”) and strictly Broadway numbers for the Mother Superior (“Haven’t Got a Prayer”). If you do not think much about the show and let the songs wash over you, it makes for a pleasant enough evening.
Ta’Rea Campbell anchors the show well as Deloris, brimming with charisma, shaking the rafters with her voice and scoring with her many laugh lines. Hre supporting cast is solid, particularly Hollis Resnik as the Mother Superior and mellow-voiced Chester Gregory, repeating his Broadway role as the nervous cop who has long had a crush on Deloris (“I Could Be That Guy”).
Jerry Zaks took over the show’s direction as it was headed to New York and deserves credit for the show’s tightened pace and whatever sense it makes. Sister Act is no award winner, but it will amuse you for a few hours.
SISTER ACT, Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sun., March 9. Tickets: From $25 up. Call: (561) 832-7469.