The Full Monty
To start off the 2026-27 season, the Barn Theatre is proud to present a new production of a classic comedy, The Full Monty by Simon Beaufoy, opening on 18th September (with a charity preview on 17th September).
The Full Monty was released as a film in 1997 to huge acclaim, and Beaufoy adapted his own screenplay for the stage, where it premiered at Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre in 2013 — the city where the story is set. It has since seen revivals across the UK and in Australia.
The action unfolds in mid-1990s Sheffield. After the closure of the famous local steel mills, Gaz and Dave, former skilled crane operators, are chronically unemployed, reduced to stealing old girders to sell as scrap metal. That is, until Gaz happens to witness the wild popularity of a touring male striptease act with the local female population. Gaz and Dave set about recruiting their own version of the Chippendales (what today might be called a “Shein” version). Their unique selling point being that, unlike the strippers that the ladies have seen before, these lads will take off everything – they will go “The Full Monty”. The result is a hugely entertaining storyline, building to a memorable final act where the boys get their chance to shine.
Behind the laughs, though, plays with partial or full nudity pose a special set of opportunities and challenges for cast and crew. Having already brought one such production to the Barn Theatre, the much-loved Calendar Girls in 2023, director Hannah Sayer was keen to return to this territory. While the play toys with the audience's heightened expectations around nakedness – “just how far are they going to go?” – she explains that there is so much more to the play: its humanity, its vulnerability, the gentle comedy and heart. The nudity is just another aspect of stagecraft, integrated with everything else in the play. She pays tribute to the cast's willingness to get on board with the risky subject matter from Day 1.
Masculine vulnerability runs through every layer of The Full Monty, Hannah notes. In Gaz, Dave, and their friends, we see sensitive treatments of many areas of anxiety, around social status, family roles, financial security, and, with remarkable delicacy, body image and sexuality. Their bodies are not the only things being laid bare; the most intimate aspects of the characters' inner lives are also in the spotlight.
The Full Monty is a feel-good story, even though, given the crushing weight of economic hardship upon the characters, the problems never entirely fade from view. Striptease becomes a way in which they can own their vulnerability and so begin to recover their dignity.
As Hannah observes, The Full Monty was a pioneer in encouraging ordinary men to be open about their feelings, in a time where "men don't talk about feelings", “stiff upper lip” and “real men don't cry” were the norm. In showing that this isn't the case, that men expressing emotion is healthy, even if the delivery is a little awkward (it was still the 90s, after all), the play remains strikingly relatable to modern audiences. She hopes that audiences will come away from this production thoroughly well-entertained and at the same time reflective and uplifted.
