If you enjoy laughing so hard that your face hurts the next day, then this is the show for you. If you are a prude, stay home. “The Full Monty” is rated R for language and nudity, but it gets an A+ for humor.
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let’s talk about food. For those of you who aren’t familiar with dinner theater, your ticket comes with a full dinner served to you by the same people who you will watch perform on stage. They put the multi in multi-talented.
I’ve been going to Boulder’s Dinner Theater for a very long time and their menu has grown and changed through the years. The old standby and guest favorite, Chicken Cordon Bleu, is still on the menu, but there are some great new additions.
A couple delicious salad entrees have come and gone, but today my favorite is the honey smoked salmon salad. They don’t skimp on the salmon on this entree, and it left me satisfyingly full. My husband ordered the Teriyaki Beef Noddle Bowl, my favorite on our last visit.
We attended the show with another couple, and they enjoyed the Chicken Cordon Bleu and Vegetable Curry. I truly think that Boulder’s Dinner Theater has turned it up a notch in the last couple years when it comes to their culinary offerings.
In a moment of insanity, my husband ordered Hot Metal, one of this show’s specialty drinks, a top shelf margarita with a tiny corona tipped into it and served in a souvenir glass. It was tasty and we now have our very own “The Full Monty” pint glass.
Once the show got underway, you could feel the audience lean forward in anticipation, and then when the opening scene unfolded, we collectively leaned back. Yes, this show opens with a male strip tease, and at times I had to look through my fingers.
Don’t worry. This show doesn’t qualify as pornography. In fact, the play is based on a rather charming English movie released in 1997. It follows a group of unemployed steel workers in a small town who can’t find jobs. Their unemployment isn’t only affecting their ability to provide for their families, but is making all of them feel less manly.
The stage version of “The Full Monty” is set in Buffalo, New York, but is more or less the same story. Jerry (Seth Caikowski) is the ringleader of the group. As an unemployed divorcee and father to a 12-year-old son, Jerry is having a hard time making his child support payments.
When this group of men finds out that their wives and girlfriends all paid $50 apiece to see the Chippendales perform, they devise a plan. They are going to present a one-night extravaganza strip show featuring themselves and representing “real men.” To make it more exciting than the Chippendales, they promise to go full monty.
The dancers are Jerry, tall and lanky, his best friend Dave (Joel Adam Chavez), who sports an authentic beer belly, Horse (Robert Johnson), a 50-something “big black man,” Malcolm (Brett Ambler), a mama’s boy, Ethan (Burke Walton), whose only stripper asset is that he’s well endowed, and Harold (Scott Beyette), who has yet to tell his wife (Joanie Brosseau) that he was laid off six months ago.
This is an unlikely dance troupe, and an even more unlikely strip tease dance troupe, and hilarity ensues as the guys attempt to learn sexy dance routines, while trying to keep their home lives in balance.
As always at Boulder’s Dinner Theater, Joanie Brosseau was one of my favorites. This blonde is a firecracker on the stage and acts out her roles using every fiber of her tiny frame. If she’s in a scene, my eye is immediately drawn to her.
Seth Caikowski, who recently stole the show in the “Wizard of Oz” as the Cowardly Lion, is excellent as the well-meaning, but less than perfect, Jerry. The entire play is well cast, and every character fits into their role like a glove.
“The Full Monty” is irreverent, and a little raunchy, but it is a whole lot of fun, and a memorable night out. So grab your spouse or a group of gal pals, and head to Boulder’s Dinner Theater. “The Full Monty” is on stage now through November 9, 2013. Go to BouldersDinnerTheatre.com for show times and ticket information.
Review also appearing in the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor.