The Full Monty from Worthing Musical Comedy Society

The show runs at Worthing’s Connaught Theatre from Wednesday to Saturday, May 7-10, with tickets available on https://wtm.uk/events/wmcs-the-full-monty/

For Matt, it is his second directing job on the bounce with Worthing Musical Comedy Society. He previously did Nativity The Musical. Before that he was assistant director on a number of shows.

“I've directed for a number of years within schools. I used to work within schools teaching, coaching and directing youth theatres, and alongside that I was performing with companies like WMCS and being in their shows. And I’d always enjoyed that since I was really young. But it got to lockdown and I think it was a really reflective time for people. And when we came out of lockdown, the first show afterwards was Guys and Dolls. I worked with the director on that but I had lost something in lockdown. I lost my passion for performing. I didn't get the same thrill from being on stage that I used to get. I didn't get the same buzz in the same way. Maybe priorities had changed. I think the pandemic maybe realigned my enjoyment.

“But I had performed for a long time. I've been lucky enough. I had some fabulous parts and I never felt that I was leaving something unfinished but it's just I didn't get the same buzz from Guys and Dolls. But in the show the director got me involved creatively in some of the dancing and I loved doing it.”

And directing started to take over – to the extent that he was in a position to suggest this latest show: “I'm relatively new to directing with the company but they asked me what would I be interested in directing and I said this! I think they picked up on my enthusiasm for it more than anything else!

“I just think it is such a fabulous show. I really do. Lots of people see The Full Monty quite two-dimensionally as a show basically about blokes getting their kit off, which for some people is great. But there's so much more to it than that. It touches on some really important themes, like men's mental health which is a massive topic in the show. It's also touching on the inequality between men and women and how they are perceived, how weight is seen as a huge issue for women but doesn't really matter if you're a bloke. There's a whole number where the guys think about what if the girls spoke about them in the way they spoke about women. There is a massive feminist theme about our approach to bodies in the film. I just think there's so much in there.

“I first saw the film years ago. I must have been about 16 years old. It was just one of those things. It was on the telly and I watched it and it really, really gripped me. And I thought how fabulous it was that it had been turned into musical because obviously the musical is such a different thing, especially this one which sets it in Buffalo in America for one thing. At the time, the musical was written for American audiences so they wanted to put that spin on it but I guess in American accents are better on the stage than northern ones! But it really does work. Buffalo, New York is not a glamorous place and it doesn't glamorise the characters either. It keeps it true to the spirit of the original and what the characters are lacking, characters who are out of work, out of money, out of luck and in some cases out of ideas as well.”