Briefs or boxers

It takes some nerve to present The Full Monty—basically one long tease as to whether we’ll see six guys whip off their underwear and dance—at the Sacramento Community Center Theatre, which has that unadorned, anatomically correct statue of Poseidon standing right outside.

No matter. It’s a surprisingly funny, enjoyable show. You may remember the 1997 British film. Some changes have been made. The location’s been shifted from the out-of-business steel mills of Sheffield, Yorkshire, in England to Buffalo, N.Y., a post-industrial depression zone more resonant with geographically challenged Americans. Alas, the film’s chewy Yorkshire accents disappeared along the way. The borrowed disco hits in the movie have been replaced by a more musically complex original score by David Yazbek, who got a Tony nomination for his work. And there are more song-and-dance numbers; this stage version is nearly an hour longer than the flick.

But the basics are intact. The story still involves middle-aged guys slammed by sudden unemployment, which leads to falling dominoes such as rocky romance, wounded self-confidence and a desperate and rather funny stab at an unlikely avenue of financial salvation. But, at its core, this is a buddy story, decked out with lots of nervous verbal innuendo regarding penis size—much discussed, never seen. It all transfers well to the stage under the nurturing guidance of playwright Terrence McNally, who knows a thing or two about human nature and who wrote a truckload of scenes for genuinely naked men in his play Love! Valour! Compassion!.

But, above all, the show, reviewed when the tour was in San Francisco, benefits from not taking itself too seriously. Even though it clearly has been planned meticulously, it feels more spontaneous and less forced than most touring shows that visit Sacramento under the auspices of the Broadway Series. Have fun.