Filmdom's "The Full Monty" was the surprise low budget hit of 1997 with Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and a win with Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score. The movie told of six average-looking men who decide to star in a strip show to raise money in their economical depressed mill town ("Full Monty" refers to a British term meaning to get completely naked in a strip). Ironically, the movie ended just as the gents braved the full monty to a club filled with the town's populace.
Perhaps this is not the first film one would think of musicalizing, but it's one Old Globe artistic director Jack O'Brien dreamed of one day mounting at the San Diego venue. May 23-July 2, 2000, he'll get his chance to direct the David Yazbek-Terrence McNally rendering of the film on the Old Globe mainstage.
McNally is, of course, well known for the books to Ragtime and Kiss of the Spider Woman as well as his plays Corpus Christi, The Lisbon Traviata and the oft-naked Love! Valor! Compassion!. Yazbek, on the other hand, is a pop songwriter who is best known for co writing the theme to "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" with Sean Altman of Rockapella. He has produced for XTZ, Space Hog and Tito Puente, while opening as a singer-songwriter for the acts Verve Pipe, the Samples and Ben Folds Five. His albums include "The Laughing Man," named Pop Album of the Year by NAIRD/AFIM, and 1998's "Tock."
Jerry Mitchell will choreograph. Mitchell has experience with movies and nudity -- his credits include "In & Out" and the yearly BC/EFA charity event Broadway Bares. Mitchell also gave Hedwig and the Angry Inch their musical staging, as he did with Captains Courageous and the Paper Mill Playhouse's recent revival of Follies.
The 2000 season at the Old Globe Theatre will also include a revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in a new translation by Tom Stoppard (Feb. 10-March 12) and the San Diego premiere of Joe DiPietro's Italian American comedy, Over the River and Through the Woods. Over the River is special to the Globe, as it reunites veteran Globe talent Marion Ross (TV's "Happy Days" and "Brooklyn Bridge"), last seen at the theatre in the 1973 Summer and Smoke with the theatre's founder Craig Noel, who will direct. The Cassius Carter stage will see the West Coast premiere of Conor McPherson's Irish drama The Weir (Feb. 2-March 12), the Steven Dietz comedy, Private Eyes (March 22-April 30) and Jon Marans' Old Wicked Songs (May 24-July 2). Joseph Hardy (last season's Bedroom Farce) will direct The Weir with Brendan Fox on Eyes and Richard Seer helming Wicked Songs.
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