THE UK amateur premiere of The Full Monty is being unzipped here in York, and there won't be a hotter ticket in town all summer.

You all know the 1997 film but you may not know the musical, the Broadway show that swapped Tom Jones and Hot Chocolate for punchy, soulful, story-enhancing songs by David Yazbek. What's more, the boys in the buff are from Buffalo, America's steel town, rather than Yorkshire's very own Sheffield.

Keep your hat on, the changes give Yazbek and Terrence McNally's musical its individuality while staying true to the universal theme of the original, as six men fight back from the crushing blow of redundancy to find new hope from within by becoming a strip act.

Jean-Pierre Bolet's camp and saucy opening strip routine has the female bear pit off and running, and Mike Thompson's ballsy band with its trombones and trumpets gives the show an instant Commitments-style clout in Scrap, as the redundancy notices are handed out.

Pathos vies with broad comedy. On the one hand Martin Lettin's divorced, unemployed, edgy Jerry Lukowski is desperately trying to cling on to his relationship with his son, Nathan (Luke Redhead in his impressive Shipton debut); on the other, Yazbek and McNally come up with colourful, humorous dance numbers such as It's A Woman's World and Michael Jordan's Ball, choreographed with a big, broad smile by Lesley Hill.

Robert Readman casts his hugely enjoyable show with an eye for both solo stand-outs and well-matched partnerships. Antonie Williams-Browne as Horse, the veteran with all the dance moves, lifts the first half to new heights in Big Black Man; Scott Garnham's suicidal, gay mummy's boy Malcolm wins hearts; Michael Oliver's Ethan plays his running joke with gusto; Sarah Barker's acid-tongued piano basher, Jeanette, steals scene after scene.

At the same time Yazbek and McNally cleverly build up the social contrasts yet failure-wracked similarities between working-class Dave and Georgie (the Shrek-like Mark Bray and Sandy Nicholson) and white-collar Harold (John Hall) and sunbed-loving Vicki (Carol Hill in her welcome stage comeback).

Do you see the boys' Full Monty pythons? That would be telling, but hats off to a fantastic show.

Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:32 Wednesday, July 27, 2005