HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH!

A Preacher said: "If I had all the beer in the world, I'd take it and throw it into the river."

And the congregation cried,"Amen!"

"And if I had all the wine in the world, I'd take it and throw it in the river."

And the congregation cried,"Amen!"

"And if I had all the whiskey and rum in the world, I'd take it all and throw it in the river."

Again the congregation cried, "Amen!"

The preacher sat down. The deacon then stood up & said: "For our closing hymn, let's turn to page 126 of our hymn books and sing, "We shall drink from that river."

THE CONGREGATION SCREAMED, "HALLELUJAH!!!"

The Full Monty

 

The Full Monty

Noel Coward Theatre, London
Simon Beaufoy's stage version of the iconic film is well directed but feels like a missed opportunity to address any of the degradation of unemployment

 

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/26/full-monty-review-beaufoy-noel-coward

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  by Michael Billington

In place of indignation at the insult to human dignity of unemployment, the show becomes a chip off the old Chippendales. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

In the end, it's all a matter of taste. Around me people were screaming with delight at Simon Beaufoy's stage version of his iconic 1997 film and I've no doubt it will go on to make a packet.

I can only report that I felt deep disappointment that much of the anger at the degradation of unemployment that inspired the original has drained away in what has become a jolly night out.

Beaufoy's play, first seen at the Sheffield Lyceum last year, follows the screenplay closely. We are still confronted by a group of Sheffield steelworkers who have lost not just their jobs and pay packets but their sense of self-worth.

Hardest hit is Gaz, who must find £600 or face a court order denying him access to his son. But his mate Dave has been rendered impotent by joblessness and even their ex-foreman Gerald is living a lie and pretending to his free-spending wife he is still in work. So at Gaz's instigation they decide to do a cash-raising one-night stand as strippers, recruiting three extra guys for the purpose.

So what exactly has changed? Fundamentally, the actor-audience relationship. In the cinema we could form our own judgment as to whether there was something sad or courageous about jobless men stripping for cash. But, in the theatre, we become complicit in the experience. The moment when Gaz first peels off his T-shirt is greeted with whoops of delight. The subsequent shedding of trousers induces ecstasy. And by the climax, when the men finally go the whole hog – even though a quick blackout covers their assets – it seemed as if the roof of the theatre might lift off.

I am all for people having a good time. But in place of indignation at the insult to human dignity of unemployment, the show becomes a chip off the old Chippendales.

The flaw in Beaufoy's basic idea is also exposed in the theatre, where you realise that finally nothing has radically changed: the guys have raised some cash but are no nearer getting work. Even the gags look a bit cheesy in the cold light of day: we are apparently meant to laugh uproariously when the quiet security man Lomper tells a female stripper: "You've got knockers and we're after knobs."

The one moment of real wit comes when the shyly closeted Lomper, nicely played by Craig Gazey, says to a falsely confident gay colleague: "Don't you worry, you'll always be the unacceptable face of homosexual depravity round here."

What the play never addresses is the big issue: why it should be regarded as heroic or uplifting, rather than degrading, for men or women to strip for money?

I admit that the whole thing is efficiently directed by Daniel Evans, that Robert Jones's design evokes the atmosphere of a desolate steelworks and that the acting is good. Kenny Doughty blends macho cockiness and paternal desperation as Gaz, Roger Morlidge is all nervous embarrassment as his well-rounded chum and Simon Rouse endows the clothes-shedding Tory foreman with a silvery gravity.

But, while I may be in a minority of one, I see the play as a missed opportunity. It could have been a chance to underline the straits to which people are reduced by lack of work and to remind us of the ravages faced in the industrial north.

Instead it becomes a jovial hen-party fiesta that might well be re-titled Thongs Ain't Wot They Used to Be.

Until 14 June. Box office: 0844 482 5141