NAKED AMBITION

SAN DIEGO —  There’s a moon over Buffalo tonight. Six moons, in fact, and they’re full.

They’re the heart, soul, backside and raison d’etre of “The Full Monty: The Musical.” The hugely popular 1997 film about unemployed steel mill workers stripping for cash in Sheffield, under the gray skies of England’s decrepit northern industrial region, has been relocated to a candy-colored vision of Upstate New York. The story has been dressed up, and down, and then further down, as a raucous, uneven, trashy, highly entertaining musical comedy, which opened Thursday at the Old Globe Theatre.

It has some problems, but it has the aura of a hit. Between a pre-sold title, an idiosyncratic and catchy score by composer-lyricist David Yazbek, and a clever answer to the pressing theatrical question of the new century--do you actually see ‘em?--”The Full Monty” delivers.

If “Full Monty” director Jack O’Brien, the Old Globe’s artistic director, manages some key revisions, Broadway may not have landed its next masterwork, but it may well have a new, sorely needed populist success.

Librettist Terrence McNally previously supplied the books to “Ragtime” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” among others. He knows a few things about adapting well-known material from other mediums. As it stands, however, at just under the three-hour mark, “The Full Monty” won’t strike anyone as McNally’s finest hour, merely his most phallocentric--and that includes “Love! Valour! Compassion!”

In Simon Beaufoy’s pungent original screenplay, the Sheffield lads were led into stripping by Gaz, a single father behind in his child support, played by David Carlyle. He was an arrested-adolescent case with a notion that “waving your tackle” at the local lasses could make you money and make you a hero, at least until the next trip to the unemployment line. Everyone remembers that scene from the movie: Gaz and the boys practicing their moves to the strains of Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.” It was enough to get people thinking about the material’s musical-comedy prospects, though oddly this scene isn’t re-created here.

In McNally’s libretto, Gaz becomes Jerry Lukowski (Patrick Wilson), whose son Nathan (Adam Covalt) shuttles between Jerry’s bachelor apartment and the new home of Jerry’s ex, Pam (Lisa Datz). Though the women’s roles have been expanded, if not necessarily made more interesting, the film’s central figures remain largely the same.

*

The reluctant strippers include Harold (Marcus Neville), the laid-off supervisor who hasn’t told wife Vicki (Emily Skinner) about his unemployment. There’s Dave (John Ellison Conlee), overweight and undersexed, with a frustrated wife, Georgie (Annie Golden), and Noah, nicknamed “Horse,” (Andre De Shields), a 50ish African American amid a sea of pasty white flesh, still able to do a mean mashed potato and funky chicken.

Ethan (Romain Fruge), the guy with something extra, finds love via Malcolm (Jason Danieley), the suicidal security guard and fellow closet case. This was hinted at in Fox Searchlight Pictures’ final cut of the movie; McNally borrows freely from the original screenplay.

In a misguided attempt to provide Jerry with a dreaded “character arc,” McNally makes the protagonist far more loutish and homophobic than his film equivalent. In a men’s room encounter with a gay Chippendale’s stripper (Denis Jones, whose G-string routine opens Act 1), Jerry tries to deck the guy, but ends up getting decked himself. “Fairies, 1; Christians, 0,” says the stripper, in a line apparently left over from McNally’s “Corpus Christi.” It’s a supremely pandering moment.

Not that you’d accuse composer-lyricist Yazbek of highfalutin’ sentiments. The score hits its stride with “Big Ass Rock,” in which Jerry and Dave contemplate different ways of killing the hapless would-be suicide Malcolm. It’s a lot funnier than it sounds. “Just before the lights go out/You’ll see my smile and you’ll know you’ve got a friend,” Jerry sings. “With a rock. Who cares.”

McNally’s smartest addition is the character of rehearsal pianist Jeanette Burmeister, wonderfully played by Kathleen Freeman. Yazbek gives her a tasty sure-fire Act 2 opener (“Jeanette’s Blues,” rife with show-biz references to Sinatra, Buddy Greco and their ilk). While often strident, Yazbek’s lyrics at their best have a way of getting laughs on the fly, as they’re carried along on his surprising, spiky, wrong-note melody lines. (Hats off to musical director Ted Sperling here as well.)

Yazbek’s resume includes producing credits for the band XTC, and the “Full Monty” score proffers an infectious wiseacre sensibility similar to the XTC sound. Yazbek’s a shrewd pastiche artist; “The Full Monty” skips from a swing-tempo overture (orchestrated well for a 12-piece pit band by Harold Wheeler) to a cha-cha lesson to up-tempo rousers, such as “Michael Jordan’s Ball,” in which the fellas lose their choreographic inhibitions by running basketball drills.

*

As a whole “The Full Monty” isn’t what anyone would call uninhibited. Unlike the film the stage musical, choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, is all beefcake, all the time, starting with a Chippendale stripper opener, right on through the finale (“Let It Go”). McNally keeps the below-the-belt jokes coming, often surprisingly witlessly. (Blue-collar guy talk may not be his strong suit.)

Scenic designer John Arnone offers a fanciful vision of depressed Buffalo by way of gliding scenic panels and a pictorial style that could be called “Upstate Cubism,” brightly treated by lighting designer Howell Binkley. Realism it’s not, nor is it trying to be. This is a primary-colors, aggressively, even stridently Americanized “Full Monty,” but it suits the sound of this show.

As Jerry, Wilson can’t do much to redeem the overstressed loutishness of McNally’s writing, but he’s easy company, supported by especially nice work from Conlee’s sweet, sad Dave; De Shields’ Horse (who brings down the house with the dance break to “Big Black Man”); and in a semi-thankless role, Datz’s winning, sympathetic Pam. Todd Weeks scores in a bit part as a particularly untalented auditioning stripper. Freeman slays throughout, secure in the knowledge that she possesses McNally’s best seen-it-all wisecracks.

Just before the guys drop it at the finale, cast members infiltrate the Globe auditorium encouraging us (their fellow Buffalo citizens) to chant along on the line, “Hey, hey, whadda ‘ya say. Buffalo men go all the way!” Shameless, and of course, it works. McNally’s book scenes may go on a bit--they’re ripe for a 10- to 15-minute excision--and there’s a crudeness to this musical that, while not out of sync with the movie’s sensibility, is less authentic.

I doubt that’ll hurt this project much. And Yazbek’s a find. His work varies widely in quality, but in the end, he’s the one who succeeds in giving this British tall tale a sharp, funny American voice.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

* “The Full Monty: The Musical,” Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends July 2. $23-$42. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes.

Patrick Wilson: Jerry Lukowski

John Ellison Conlee: Dave Bukatinski

Andre De Shields: Noah “Horse” T. Simmons

Jason Danieley: Malcolm

Lisa Datz: Pam

Kathleen Freeman: Jeanette

Romain Fruge: Ethan

Marcus Neville: Harold

Emily Skinner: Vicki

Book by Terrence McNally. Music and lyrics by David Yazbek. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Scenic design by John Arnone. Costumes by Robert Morgan. Lighting by Howell Binkley. Musical director Ted Sperling. Choreography by Jerry Mitchell. Sound by Jeff Ladman. Production stage manager Nancy Harrington.