The Full Monty – Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre, Birmingham

Picture: Nicholas Corre

The Full Monty continues at the Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre, Birmingham until 1 September 2018. 

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

What a production. What a venue. This unforgettable musical, based of course on Simon Beaufoy and Peter Cattaneo’s 1997 film, features those rash, courageous chaps, egged on by lead Jerry Lukowski (terrific, petulant Alex Wadham), plotting a few bob by untogging in front of ‘an audience of thousands’.

We don’t see their dangly bits because, as you’ll remember, they have (here) peaked police caps to cover the naughty truth. But Terrence McNally’s is a scrummy script.

It takes Jerry strenuous efforts to win over hefty best mate Dave Bukatinsky (Oliver Britten, equally splendid). Both of them get cold feet. It’s a pity wife Georgie’s (lovely, caring Sam Carlyle) and Dave’s son, young Nathan (a beautifully sensitive, Billy Elliot-type showing from James Blake-Butler), isn’t part of the party, because he has more guts and intelligence than most. Old Joint Stock Theatre’s Adam Lacey and Karl Steele have amassed a quality cast. No weak links. Everyone dazzled. A corker of a show.

Musical director Jack Hopkins and assistant musical director Ian Stephenson’s seven-man band (including super reed player Liz Oughton) deserve applause.

David Yazbek’s score is never corny. This show never flags, or loses those touching moments – family crises, social anxieties, even race (Aaron Mwale as a wonderfully crotchety, canny, grizzled codger, whose credentials – nicknamed ‘horse’ – the lesser hung team is terrified of).

It all fits together. When the set is credited to A & K Scaffolding Ltd. of Wednesbury, you get the picture: a plain, simple rear catwalk, ‘wrigglable’ through, which the imaginative Steele and Lacey enlist with skill for the out-of-work (not Sheffield, but Buffalo) steelworkers.

But that’s the joy of OJST: it’s an intimate space, the audience on three sides is beautifully close, the rectangular space is all you need for make-believe. There’s a (real) gin bar, and a pub downstairs. It reminds me of the King’s Head in Islington, or Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate – great London theatre venues.

Kirsty Cartwright almost steals this idyllic show as ludicrously bewigged Jeanette, Meryl Streep plus Joanna Lumley, pounding a piano with parody perfect timing: a hoot. Auriol Hatcher combats Jerry, her sharp but pig-headed other half, and gives as good as she gets. Vicki Nichols’ Jennifer is a treat (all the female numbers are fab; one duet is electrifying). Jack Ballard as unwavering Ethan Girard is the kind of back-up actor you dream of.

Do they hit the jackpot? You bet. One I haven’t mentioned. When the duo meet Malcolm (Duncan Burt) he’s about to commit suicide. They discuss, hysterically, ways of doing it – then recruit him. Every time Burt comes onstage, there’s a sort of deepening of the atmosphere, and of pathos. Moving – and meaningful.

Pippa Lacey’s great choreography means a great deal is engineered in that modest space. A joyous, studied mix of controlled shambles and delicious invention. The Full Montyhas travelled from Denmark to Korea, Australia to – well – Wetherby, but I’m glad I saw it at Old Joint Stock Theatre. I’ll definitely go again.

Roderic Dunnett