Jarrod Emick, lately of The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway, will take Patrick Wilson's place in the London production of The Full Monty, a spokesperson for the West End show confirmed.
Wilson departed the show to take the lead in the upcoming Broadway revival of Oklahoma!
The other five of the six original Broadway cast members of the hit musical comedy will cross the pond and strip down in London in 2002. That would include Tony nominees John Ellison Conlee and Andre De Shields, plus Jason Danieley (whose wife Marian Mazzie is in London with Kiss Me, Kate), Romain Fruge and Marcus Neville.
"The Full Monty" film was the surprise low-budget hit of 1997 with Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and wins with Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score. The movie told of six average looking British men who decide to star in a strip show to raise money in their economical depressed mill town (The term "the full monty" means to take something to the fullest - in the case of the strippers, that means to get completely naked). Ironically, the movie ended just as the gents braved "the full monty" to a club filled with the town's populace.
Bookwriter Terrence McNally and composer-lyrcist David Yazbek, however, opted to change the locale of the piece, moving it to Buffalo, New York from Sheffield, England. They have also added a few characters: a gorgeous gay stripper who beats the stuffing out of homophobic Jerry , and the guys' rehearsal pianist, Jeanette, whose shining moment is "Jeanette's Showbiz Number." Other songs in the score include "Scrap," "It's a Woman's World," "Man," "Big Ass Rock," "Life With Harold," "Big Black Man," "You Rule My World," "Michael Jordan's Ball," "Breeze Off the River," "The Goods," "You Walk With Me" and "Let It Go."
Before opening on Broadway Oct. 26, The Full Monty began life at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre June 1 with good reviews and an Old Globe box office record. Performances extended there through July 9 before the show was remounted at Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theatre Sept. 25, opening Oct. 26.
